Meeting in Mende

March 2014 in Mende, 249 years later

Representatives from the various Estates of the Gévaudan met for their annual meeting in Mende on March 26, 1765, to be led by the diocese's bishop. This year’s discussions would not focus on the usual topics concerning local communities, economies, and so on, but would understandably focus on the predations of the Beast. Lafont presented an action plan, which included a cautious arming of the peasantry, the hiring of poachers, the guarding of livestock in common areas, and allowing a local noble, count Morangiès, son of the influential marquis Morangiès, to to coordinate large groups of guards in locales frequented by the Beast. Lafont forwarded his proposals to his superior, Saint-Priest, intendant of Languedoc, but ultimately, the authorities replaced first hunter Captain Duhamel with the d’Ennevals, a renowned father/son duo of wolf-hunters from the French province of Normandy more than two hundred miles to the north. The d'Ennevals, given their own opportunity to perform at large, asked for the speedy reporting of Beast attacks and for bodies to be left in place until the hunters arrived.