How the 18th-Century French Media Stoked a Werewolf Panic

Should you’ve stud­ied French (or, certainly, been French) previously cou­ple of many years, you might smartly have performed the cardboard recreation Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux. Identified in Eng­lish as The Have been­wolves of Millers Hol­low, it casts its play­ers as hunters, thieves, seers, and oth­er varieties of rur­al vil­lagers within the dis­tant previous. Via evening, some play­ers additionally hap­pen to be had been­wolves, at risk of consume the oth­ers of their sleep. Although such beings would possibly nev­er actu­al­ly have exist­ed, they loom honest­ly huge in French pop­u­lar cul­ture nonetheless lately — now not least, consistent with­haps, as a result of they loomed even larg­er two and a part cen­turies in the past, such that his­to­ry now acknowl­edges a peri­od known as the French Have been­wolf Epi­dem­ic.

“Within the 1760s, close to­ly 3 hun­dred peo­ple had been killed in a far off area of south-cen­tral France known as the Gévau­dan (lately a part of the départe­ment of Lozère),” says the Pub­lic Area Overview. “The killer was once regarded as an enormous ani­mal, which got here to be recognized sim­ply as ‘the Beast’; however whilst the creature’s identify remained sim­ple, its rep­u­ta­tion quickly grew excessive­ly com­plex.”

Within the press, which spec­u­lat­ed in this concern­some crea­ture’s pre­ferred meth­ods of assault (decap­i­ta­tion, blood-drink­ing, and so on.), “illus­tra­tors had a box day rep­re­despatched­ing the Beast, whose seem­ance was once document­ed to be so mon­strous it beg­gared trust.”

Via the win­ter of 1764–65, “the assaults within the Gévau­dan had cre­at­ed a country­al fer­vor, to the purpose that King Louis XV inter­vened, be offering­ing a praise equivalent to what maximum males would have earned in a 12 months.” In Sep­tem­ber of 1756, a lieu­tenant named François Antoine “shot the enor­mous ‘Wolf of Chazes,’ which was once filled and placed on dis­play in Ver­sailles.” This did­n’t forestall the killings, however “through now the Roy­al Court docket had misplaced inter­est. The sto­ry had performed itself out, and pub­lic atten­tion had moved directly to oth­er mat­ters. Good fortune­i­ly a neighborhood noble­guy, the Mar­quis d’Apcher, orga­nized anoth­er hunt, and in June 1767 the hunter Jean Chas­tel laid low the remaining of what had became out to be the Beasts of the Gévau­dan.”

“The Beast’s stom­ach was once full of human stays and, through all posthu­mous accounts, didn’t glance any­factor like a typ­i­cal wolf,” says Dan­ger­ous Minds. “They had been additionally ready to ascer­tain that the ani­mal was once sole­ly respon­si­ble for 95% of the assaults on people from 1764 to 1767.” As to what the ani­mal actu­al­ly was once, the­o­ries abound: perhaps an unusu­al­ly huge or rabid wolf, perhaps a hye­na, perhaps even a lion. As for the extra fan­tas­ti­cal the­o­ries that cap­tured the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion of the time, they will have handed into the area of delusion, however the ones myths con­tin­ue to encourage lit­er­a­ture, movie, tele­vi­sion, and video games. And as any­person who’s performed Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux a couple of occasions below­stands, the had been­wolf’s good fortune usu­al­ly runs out.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Extraordinary Danc­ing Plague of 1518: When Hun­dreds of Peo­ple in France May just Now not Prevent Danc­ing for Months

The Points of interest & Sounds of 18th Cen­tu­ry Paris Get Recre­at­ed with three-D Audio and Ani­ma­tion

A 1665 Adver­tise­ment Promis­es a “Well-known and Effec­tu­al” Remedy for the Nice Plague

How the Yr 2440 Used to be Imag­ined in a 1771 French Sci-Fi Nov­el

John Stein­beck Wrote a Have been­wolf Nov­el, and His Property Received’t Let the Global Learn It: The Sto­ry of Mur­der at Complete Moon

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and extensive­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the guide The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­guide.