The Beast of Gevaudan - A foreword

The case of the Beast of Gevaudan has become a bad crime fiction story. It is as annoying for the crime fiction writer that we are as it is to the readers interested for more than a century in this tragical and puzzling historical event. Above all, it is sad for the memory of the almost hundred official victims, not counting those that may have been forgotten by historical archives of the time. There have been so many contradictory statements published about the Beast since half a century that new generations are inclined to believe it is just a myth, an old legend born form credulity and superstition of ancient times.

It is not so. The french province of Gévaudan, now split in two administrative department named Lozère and Haute-Loire spreading across the Margeride mountains, actually saw a long serie of attacks whose records go back to 1764, and which ended in 1767 with the killing by a local hunter of an animal still unknown to this day, despite the discovery in the Department Archives in 1958 of an autopsy report by a royal notary established the day after the killing.

Let's agree on the « bad » adjective used previously. It is not about qualifying the case itself, according to subjective criterias such as entertainment. The cruel death of dozens of human beings, most of them children and teenagers, savagely hurt or maimed, subjects to terror and suffering in their last minutes, is not entertaining, even considered two and half centuries after the case. The distance, bet it chronological or cultural, that separates us from this era, doesn't grant us the right to become dishonorable.

If we do label this event a « bad crime fiction story », it as a writer and commentator of this literary genre facing sloppy investigations, often including biased incriminating evidence. Through the important bibliography dedicated to the case, led nowadays by works from Michel Louis and Jean-Marc Moriceau setting up a status quo situation filled with mutual hostility, the fundamentals of a serious investigation have not always been followed. The conclusions presented at the end of many books are rarely based upon a full analysis of the huge historical records available, and often deviate from logical and scientifical thinking to go into speculations oriented by assumptions. Some authors wrote about this case while they have no knowledge of the historical context, of the rural world, never went hunting, are ignorant about 18^th century firearms and may never have been to the Margeride mountains.

It is no accident that the autopsy report of the Beast killed in june 1767 was finally discovered in the farming section of the Lozère department records in 1958. It is the rural world, the humble french peasantry of ancient monarchy, who was the first victim of the monster rampage. The case of the Beast of Gévaudan is a case of hunters, hunting parties, preys and predators. A trouble and dreadful period of time where human beings were considered as game, causing fear and outrage among the population, and asking for royal authorities to deploy more and more important means to put an end to killings that were attracting a lot of media attention.

Despite the numerous works on the subject, the main question still has no answer : was it a lone animal ? Was the Beast wild or domesticated ? Was it an exotic kind ? A crossover bred by one or several criminal minds ?

To submit these theories to a rigorous analysis is what will be at stake throughout our investigation. It is out of the question to offer the readers a new proposal which will just entertain them but won't give them a deeper knowledge of the case because we would have dumped all the facts that don't go our way.

We will first consult the historical data, quite important, and replace it in its historical and geographical context. We will then analyze the archives funds in terms of scientifical and technical aspects. For example, we will perfom shooting tests using a replica of an 18^th century flint gun to verify if the Beast could have been protected by some kind of man-made armor. It is not the crime fiction writer anymore who will offer his readers the most complete investigation on the Beast of Gévaudan, but the rural world inhabitant, the big game hunter and black powder shooter, the technical and scientific graduate, the six sigma certified aerospace industry qualitician.

Our only permanent requirements will be the proven fact put in its context, the comparative and critical study and the logical thinking based on available data. We will use it for all know theories and if the truth ask to highlight the weakness of already published works, we will dot it.

Time has covered the sufferings endured by the Beast's victims under a dull and dusty veil of indifference. What remains is morbid curiosity and trouble fascination for the intellectual enigma offered by the case. We still have a duty : not to forgot the pain and anguish felt by sons and daughters of the Margeride mountains, the dreadful and fatal fate that awaited them at a grove, an hollow track or a pasture, and whose martyrdom is still haunting that beautiful landscape where granite whisper to the skies.

This being said, are you now ready, my friendly readers, to follow our track in the old kingdom of France, through the mountains and harsh winters of an old province of Languedoc, in the year of our lord seventeen sixty-four ?