The Beast of Gévaudan: The Man-Eating Terror That Stalked 18th-Century France
Between 1764 and 1767, something hunted the uplands of south-central France, killing as many as a hundred people – mostly women and children caught out alone. It resisted the peasants, the professional wolf-hunters, and finally the personal gun-bearer of King Louis XV. To this day, no one is certain what the Beast of Gévaudan really was.