Beast

by S. R. Schwalb

  “This beast,” she whispered to her husband later, as if she was almost afraid to speak her thoughts. “Could it be the one he has dreamed about since he was very small?”

  Claude’s father was silent.

  That night, the boy carefully sharpened an old knife he’d inherited from his grandfather and tied it tight to the branch he used to guide his farmstock.

  The next day, Claude, accompanied by Ruffe, took the cattle to their grazing area and stood watch.

  Clouds, gray and black, churned above. The chilling wet of an autumn cloudburst drove Claude and his animals to take shelter beneath the trees, branches raining red and orange leaves upon them in bursts of wind.

  ***

  Naturalists out of necessity, the young herders who spent much of their time outside were considered to be magical personages, “able to ‘read’ the ‘book’ of nature.” It’s easy to see why: Day after day, year after year, as they took their charges to the same heaths and meadows, they grew to know the ways of their world, to the families of wild creatures with which they co-existed to the individual rocks along the paths they traveled. Herders might sigh at midsummer, knowing the world was now back on the path toward winter and months of entrapment indoors. In autumn, as light decreased, they could predict when certain trees would begin to drop their leaves. They studied the skies, the phases of the moon, and marveled at shooting stars and other phenomena. Once Claude observed an entire hill illuminated with the greenish light of glowworms (which would be termed Lampyris noctiluca—“shining ones” and “night light”—by Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in three years). Once he watched a strange round white cloud float southward and suddenly fly apart, pelting stones as it vanished.

  ***

  As the storm weakened, and slowing rain trickled through the trees and down Claude’s back, the late afternoon sun emerged.

  So did the Beast.

  Its eyes blazed white, mirroring the last thunderbolt. It curled its lips and bared its teeth.

  Ruffe barked furiously.

  Claude, disbelieving, stared.

  The stories were true!

  His breath seemed to stop even as his heart accelerated to a gallop.

  I know you.

  You’re in my dreams.

  In my nightmares.

  And here it was.

  In reality.

  He clamped his hands around his branch.

  ***

  Claude was said to be small for his age. But he was a scrapper.

  He’d bested bigger boys who taunted him at the weekly meetings after mass, and even started joining in the brutal fracases in which his commune (district) fought for honor over others.

  He swallowed, straightened, and looked the Beast in the eye. If it was some sort of a wolf, Claude knew, you could sometimes face them down. They’d sit, do a turnabout, and leave, not really wanting much to do with people anyway. It was the livestock they were after.

  As if on cue, a cow lowed in warning. Claude turned, seeking her calf.

  It was his fatal mistake.

  Muscle in motion, the Beast came on full bore, leaping for the youth’s neck.

  Claude leaned back, grunting, lashing out with his homemade pike. The Beast snapped the branch in two.

  Ruffe charged, sinking his teeth into the Beast’s side. The monster snarled. Claude watched in amazement as it twisted around in a way no wolf could and seized the herd dog by the scruff of the neck, slamming him into a large rock.

  Ruffe yelped. Once.

  “No!” Claude howled. He grabbed the knife end of his broken pike and shoved it into the Beast’s flank.

  Agitated, the cattle began to move toward the predator, bellowing and tossing their heads.

  The Beast wheeled and charged the boy again, knocking him off balance. Claude fell. Before he could move again, the Beast wrapped its jaws around his neck, making guttural sounds. Claude croaked weakly and closed his eyes in agony.

  The cattle were surrounding their guardian and his attacker, but they had not moved fast enough.

  The Beast dragged its prey to the forest undergrowth where the bovines could not follow.

  Later, Claude’s people found his cadaver, torn limb from limb.

  Dutifully, the priest recorded Claude’s death and saw to the burial of his remains. The authorities pronounced this death, like the Beast’s other fatalities, as “non naturelle.”

  At the next mass, the curé offered his condolences to the family and the community. Claude’s mother wept. Claude’s father, one hand on the empty space between them, the other on his knee, above Ruffe’s place at his feet, spat.

  CHAPTER 5

  Le Petit Versailles du Gévaudan

  Subdelegate Lafont now hunted the Beast himself while making his rounds, a heavy flintlock pistol holstered on his saddle. He also rode alongside Count Morangiès, who, despite his best intentions toward their quest, was distracted by his debts, his family, and his affairs in Versailles and Paris.

  ***

  On September 20, a wolf of respectable size was destroyed by locals in the vicinity of Pradels, France. A reward of eighteen livres (pounds) was paid.

  Lafont, and the locals who had destroyed it and hoped for a reward, marked time, as they waited to learn whether or not it was “the one who ate people.” If the attacks ceased, it could be deduced that the killer had been caught.

  It had not.

  On the afternoon of September 29, 1764, Magdeleine Mauras, of the parish of Rocles, France, went to check on family cattle in their pasture.

  A cheerful girl, Magdeleine, like Claude, was tough. Her father had passed away early, and at twelve, she found herself a working girl, fortunate to be employed by her uncle.

  Magdeleine, in the manner of most peasants, believed a difficult life was all there was. The backbreaking labors required of her family were normal. She knew that sometimes boys got to go to school. But not girls. And not anyone in her immediate family. Her father, before he died violently at the hands of a beggar, signed his name when he had to with the symbol of a pitchfork.

  Magdeleine’s uncle, however, had learned to read and write. She hoped to learn something from him.

  She never got the chance.

  At about four-thirty that afternoon, when she went to check on his cattle, she was set upon, slain, and dismembered, her lungs and heart ripped from her chest, an arm torn away.

  When he heard the news, Lafont’s jaw tensed. He said nothing, but moved a hand across his desk for a quill and his knife. He would once more have to document for his superiors the loss of another young victim.

  ***

  October 1764

  It was becoming colder in the Gévaudan.

  In October, there were about a dozen attacks—an average of four per week—and five deaths—more than one per week.

  And this month would witness a new and more macabre development.

  In consequence of laws put in place centuries earlier, nobles alone could possess and use firearms, but Lafont pushed for, and won, temporary legalization to bear arms in Langogne for the purpose of hunting the Beast.

  The subdelegate also made arrangements for a fantastic reward—two hundred livres, equal to “a year’s salary for a day laborer!”

  In the Vivarais, Lafont’s peer, a man named Lachadenède, was able to get permission for those of the town of Pradelles to carry weapons as well.

  Hunts continued, but even with the enthusiasm that hefty rewards could muster, the wolf-stalks competed with the requirements of daily life, occurring intermittently at best. They would prove fruitless.

  The Beast, meanwhile, wearying of unwanted attention, was on the move in search of a new lair. The afforested areas to the west/northwest, near Count Morangiès’ own Saint-Alban, as well as Le Malzieu and Saint-Chely-de-Apcher, France, were promising.

  The unflagging Lafont coordinated operations with his superior, Saint-Priest, and the hunters proceeded to Marvejols on October 5. Soon after, the Beast was seen
ogling a young herder, but the peasant was protected from harm by his defiant bovines.

  Two days later, however, the body of a young woman, twenty, was discovered near Prunières, France.

  The following day, her head was found.

  ***

  Could an animal cause a human decapitation? Yes. Experts tell us that large predators’ teeth could destroy the fragile cervical articulation with which the head is attached to the body. The viciousness of the attacks, combined with the predator’s hurried transport of the remains to a secluded location in which to consume their prey in peace might result in the dislodging of the head from the torso.

  There is a contemporary documented case of a self-decapitation as a result of a suicidal hanging from a bridge. The head was separated from the body; both were located forty-eight hours later and identified.

  ***

  On October 8, a twelve-year-old boy named Jean Rieutort was savaged, but survived. Rieutort lived on to age seventy-six, becoming a priest, his scars telling the story of his harrowing encounter with the Beast.

  ***

  Later that day, an animal was discovered near a venerable estate, that of Château de la Baume.

  With portions of its structure dating to the early 1600s, situated at an altitude of twelve hundred meters (nearly four thousand feet), Château de la Baume was originally the castle home of the barony of Peyre, the Gévaudan’s most entitled, going back to the twelfth century. Constructed of granite and flagstone, the castle’s substantial size—it is among the tallest in France—lent it the nickname, “le petit Versailles du Gévaudan.”

  Today this private home is a tourist attraction, a film set, and a location for weddings, Moët et Chandon Ferrari rallies, and other gatherings.

  In late 1764, it was Beast Central.

  On October 8, 1764, hours after mauling Jean Rieutort, the Beast was observed on the grounds of Château de la Baume, eyeing another young herdsman. Hunters trailed the animal into the estate’s woods. Forced from its cover by dozens of “beaters”—peasant assistants tasked with beating through the brushwood with various implements, shouting, making noise, and in general creating an uproar to drive terrified game out into the open.

  It worked.

  The Beast was spotted and had at last become prey itself.

  And so its hunters took aim, fired, and—hit their target. But to their astonishment, the animal fell, only to rise and run on. Another shot, and again success. The creature dropped. But through the thick white smoke of gunpowder, they witnessed the same phenomenon: the Beast scrambled to its feet and took off. The hunters pursued it until nightfall, anxious to finish off the wounded animal, and resumed the next morning, pre-dawn. Two hundred men scoured the woods of Château de la Baume, hoping to find a deceased Beast. It was not to be. Hours later, the creature, traveling with a limp, was observed by witnesses prior to attacking another herd boy of twelve years of age.

  On October 10, a youth near Les Cayres, or Caires, was injured by the Beast. At dusk on that same day, the Beast ambushed three siblings, a boy of twelve, a boy of six, and a girl of about ten years of age. It seized the terrified girl and started to make off with her, when she was torn from its jaws by her brothers, who, Lafont reported to the governor, “pricked” La Bête, each armed with “a stick to which they had attached a knife.”

  A woman was killed on October 11, and a second decapitation occurred on October 15.

  Chronicler Pourcher relates that during October 1764, his own great-grandfather, Jean Pierre Pourcher, was working alone in a barn near Julianges, France, shortly before nightfall, when he looked out a window and was struck with “a sort of fear” as “an animal arrived of a type he did not know.” He grabbed his gun and fired. The creature fell, but got to its feet. Jean Pierre fired again, and the animal fell once more. But it got up for the second time, and, after “a wild cry,” departed, “making a noise similar to that of someone who parts from another after a quarrel.”

  ***

  The animal was rapidly bringing local commerce to a halt. Peasants and tradespeople were afraid to venture out to their fields or go to market. A priest of Aumont named Trocelier reported, “There are those who have lost their minds and others who will have a lot of difficulty in ever getting up again.” Pourcher comments, “In the face of such calamities the spread of terror was also added to [La Bête’s] list of crimes.”

  An account of the Beast’s predations published late in 1764 advised “fervent prayers” and “sincere conversion,” “while waiting for some hero to present himself who will undertake to fight against such a monster …”

  ***

  In his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill labeled the Seven Years’ War as “The First World War.” A struggle for supremacy between the two most powerful countries in the world—France and Britain—the conflict involved Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and India.

  Just prior to the time of the Beast, the conflict (1756–1763), also known as the French and Indian War, had proved disastrous for France financially and in regards to global influence. When it began, France was Europe’s mightiest power. By war’s end, Great Britain had become the predominant colonial empire of the world.

  In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, a peace agreement under the management of Étienne François, Duc de Choiseul, secretary of state of foreign affairs (and cousin of the Bishop of Mende) of France, ceded immense holdings to Britain: Canada, the Great Lakes, Ohio, and Louisiana east of Mississippi. The rest of Louisiana went to Spain. France also lost Senegal in West Africa and some trade operations in India. It retained very little: fishing rights off Newfoundland (the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon islands remain a French territory today); the island of Gorée, off Senegal; and the sugar- and coffee-producing Caribbean islands of Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.

  In short, in post-war 1764, France was in the midst of a “hangover,” according to historian Jay M. Smith.

  As mentioned earlier, the Morangiès, father and son, were veterans of this conflict.

  So was the first officially sanctioned Beast hunter—Captain Jean-Baptiste Duhamel.

  ***

  A warrant officer and sergeant major, Jean-Baptiste Boulanger, Monsieur Duhamel, thirty-two years old, was eager, after sharing in the collective humbling of the French armed forces, to set something right. Specially requesting the mission to destroy the man-eater, Duhamel was convinced that, at this moment, his rightful place in the universe was that of champion-to-be of the ravaged Gévaudan.

  Lafont had communicated information about the marauding animal to Count Moncan (Jean-Baptiste Marin, comte de Moncan), commander of military forces in the Languedoc, and also to the Marquis Saint-Florentin (Louis Phélypeaux, Marquis de Saint-Florentin), the French minister of state.

  Moncan directed that more than fifty dragoons (in French, dragons, musket-armed soldiers on horseback and on foot) be sent to the area, captained by Duhamel. Authorities in the Vivarais, the Gévaudan, Velay (now part of the Haute-Loire department), and the Cévennes were to assist Mr. Duhamel “in achieving the destruction of the monster or leopard prowling for some time in the mountains of Vivarais and Gévaudan, and that almost always holds in the woods of Choisinèts.”

  The captain and his dragoons arrived in Saint-Chely-de-Apcher on October 15.

  His cavalry unit, called the Clermont-Prince Volunteers, was an unusual one, not of King Louis XV, but a unit of princely light troops, the dragons des troupes légères, that had originated in Liège, Belgium, in 1758. Almost all were Germans. (About a quarter of the French army was actually made up of troops from other countries: Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Hungary among them. This was a result of recruiting difficulties, desertion, homesickness, and other issues.)

  Duhamel was French, but their own versions of the langue d’oc, dialects spoken in southern France, from which comes the region’s name: Languedoc.

  Smartly outfitted in coats, vests, ties, gloves,
boots, and helmets fringed with short horsehair “manes,” these light troops likely carried sabers deemed “Hungarian,” made by gunsmith Jean Knetch in Solingen, Germany, with curved blades measuring up to thirty-five inches in length. Some may have also carried a more basic 1750 standard-issue saber.

  They were also equipped with .66-caliber flintlock pistols, with barrel lengths of about twelve inches, weighing about two and three-quarter pounds each. Brass embellishments on the pistols’ grips allowed them to be used as clubs in close-quarter combat.

  Most carried .61-caliber flintlock rifles, accurate within the length of an American football field. But Duhamel carried a more powerful, more accurate shotgun, which he claimed to load with three bullets; Researcher Phil Barnson wonders: Did the captain believe that so armed, he could better pierce the Beast’s seemingly impermeable hide?

  Early winter weather conditions prevented Duhamel from reaching the area immediately. He arrived in Langogne on October 31.

  The peasants were hopeful the dragoons would put an end to their woes, but were unsure about having troops in their midst. Men and mounts would need food and shelter. Conflicts would arise over all of these necessities. Also, the term dragoons was still equated with the dragonnades, persecutions ordered by Louis XIV in the early 1700s in which military “missionaries” were billeted with Protestant families to convert them to Catholicism.

  On October 22, a young herdswoman was slaughtered and decapitated in Grazières, in the parish of Saint-Alban. On that same day, minister of state Saint-Florentin, coordinating communications regarding the emergency in the Gévaudan, responded to letters from Lafont.

  “There is no longer any doubt about this misfortune,” Saint-Florentin wrote. “I have approved in general, Sir, the precaution which has been taken by multiplying the number of hunters in the woods and in the districts where the ferocious beasts have appeared. I don’t think that there is only one beast and I suppose that they will soon be successfully destroyed by the means of the orders which the Count of Moncan has given to the hunters …” He cautioned against the use of nux vomica (the plant source of the deadly chemical strychnine) as the poison could kill other animals and cause disease. “The most common opinion,” he states, “is that the ferocious beasts are either lynxes or wolves that have become man-eaters.” The minister, like the king, was an avid hunter; however, he’d lost his left hand as a result of a hunting accident.