December 20, 1764

Château de la Baume, France.
The Beast escaped into the woods of this venerable estate more than once during its reign of terror. 

Nearly 50 official hunts ensued from November 15, 1764, until the September 20, 1765, killing of the first Beast, the Chazes wolf, by King Louis XV’s own porte-arquebuse, or gun-bearer, François Antoine. Hunts were made up of Duhamel and his posse until March 1765, as well as nobles, the peasantry, and fortune-hunting outsiders.

Reward monies totaling 4,000 livres, or pounds, for the Beast’s demise were now being offered by various districts, the combined estates of the province, and the bishop. The Beast was glimpsed here and there during November, and Duhamel and his men hunted dutifully but the creature continued to evade them.
 
The creature attacked four adults between November 18 and the end of the month. On the 25th, it brought death to 60-year-old widow Catherine Vally in Buffeyrettes, in this case beheading her. Perhaps even more disturbing, Duhamel used her remains as bait, believing the Beast would come back for more. It didn’t. 

Duhamel, frustrated yet faithful to his call of duty, kept the hunters on the trail in frigid and fog-obscured conditions, but with no result. Mid-December, the Beast commenced a concentrated series of attacks, beginning with the decapitation of 45-year-old herder Catherine Chastang in Vedrines St-Loup. 

Alas, it seemed that if Duhamel did not have bad luck, he had no luck at all. Around the 20th of December, the captain actually rubbed eyes with his target at Château de la Baume. But his dragoons spooked the creature before he or they could take aim. Duhamel, hungry for success, and his men, seeking a payout, were furious that their weeks’ of hunting had come to naught. Those feelings were mutually shared by those in power, awaiting results, and of course by locals who’d been plagued by the Beast’s predations and who’d put up with the dragoons’ disruptions. 

Photo credit: Ancalagon (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)]

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Dragoons are summoned

Captain Duhamel, a veteran of the Seven Years' War,
would lead the first series of official hunts for the Beast.

There were about a dozen attacks and four deaths in October 1764, with three decapitations, the first of many beheadings by the Beast. The month's first attack, which involved a decapitation, took place on October 7, when a young woman was slaughtered near Apcher, France. This was some distance from the previous slaying, indicating the Beast had done what some had hoped it would not: It had abandoned its original haunts, possibly driven away by initial hunts, and had moved on to the environs of Saint-Chély-d’Apcher. 

With local hunts fruitless thus far, Étienne Lafont, trustee of the diocese of Mende, contacted his superior, Marie-Joseph-Emmanuel de Guignard de Saint-Priest, the intendant of Languedoc province, as well as the province’s governor and military commander, General Jean-Baptiste de Morin—the comte de Moncan. On October 14, Count Moncan directed that more than 50 dragoons, captained by staff officer Jean-Baptiste Duhamel, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, be sent to the area, and that authorities in the Vivarais, the Gévaudan, Velay, and the Cévennes assist Mr. Duhamel “in destroying the monster or leopard prowling for some time in the mountains of Vivarais and Gévaudan.”*

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*Phil Barnson, http://labetedugevaudan.com/

September savages

Wooded area on the way to La Besseyre-Saint-Mary & Auvers

The Beast grew far bolder in September 1764, taking four victims in various communities throughout the month: at the beginning, on the 6th, on the 16th, and 26th. Two of these were teenage boys, one, a 12-year-old girl, and one, a 36-year-old woman. The three children had been attending to family cattle in separate, scattered pastures. The woman, the Beast's first adult victim, was attacked at home in her garden. 

A boy this time

Cattle in the present-day region of the Gévaudan

Three weeks and a day after its last slaying, the Beast killed a teenage boy on August 30, 1764. It is said the youth was taken as he watched over his family's cattle near Cheyla-l’Evêque, France.   

The next deadly attacks

Ancient doorway in the Gévaudan region

This week we observe the 250th anniversary of the passing of two young women of rural France owing to the predations of the Beast. 

On August 8, 1764, in the hamlet of Masmajean in the Gévaudan, a 15-year-old girl -- usually referred to as the animal's second official victim -- met her end. 

French historian Jean-Marc Moriceau notes another tragedy -- not mentioned in many other accounts -- occurring two days earlier, on August 6, 1764,  in the community of Cellier (also in the Gévaudan north of Masmajean and six-plus miles from the first official attack of June 30 in Auvergne). 

Marie-Anne Hébrard was "surprised, strangled, and devoured," says Moriceau, who then quotes French sources, by a "ferocious beast that is established here and has been roaming in the country for a few months."*

*Moriceau, La Bête du Gévaudan (Paris: Larousse, 2009).