The Beast of Gévaudan - Terror in the French Countryside - Halloween - Extra History

southeastern france october 1764. in the mountainous countryside where farmhouses lie miles apart and ravines swallow the unwary a killer lurks those who have seen it claim it is a great beast like a wolf but much larger others say it can run on water and jump 10-foot walls and attack survivors claim it has shining eyes it can speak like a man and it walks on hind legs that end in hooves though survivors might disagree on exactly what it looks like everyone knows how the beast kills it ambushes shepherds and drovers as they take the animals out to pasture preying selectively on women and teenagers in september it killed one 36 year old woman mere steps from her front door and this month a woman was found decapitated it took a week to find her head and this is only the beginning for the beast of jebudan will keep killing no matter what hunters the army and even the king himself do to try and stop it [Music] thanks so much to nordvpn for sponsoring today's historical horror story to take control of your internet security save 68 off a two-year plan and get one month free use code extra credits at nordvpn.com extra credits in the summer of 1764 the rural province of gevoton began battling a monster in an escalating series of incidents an unknown animal or animals attacked over 300 local peasants killing over a hundred of them and spurring mass panic yet at first no one noticed the pattern wolf attacks were not uncommon in rural france in fact some historians estimate there were hundreds of deaths a year due to the animals including occasional outbreaks of attacks that might kill 10 or 20 people before dying away again so when the bodies of two teenaged shepherdesses and one shepherd were found mutilated in the fields that summer the locals simply dismissed it as part of the harsh landscape of peasant life but then it kept happening and not just to the child and teenaged livestock handlers but also to adult women and the ferocity of these injuries was stunning the animal attacked the head and throat on occasion so viciously that it decapitated its victims at times it even carried off small children in its jaws snatching them as their mothers worked in the garden and because firearms were rare most peasants could only defend themselves with farming tools but even so farmers organized wolf hunts armed with shovels and pickaxes however the more contact the locals had with wolves the more the stories grew they said it was impervious to bullets that it had a head like a greyhound and six claws on each foot that it was a werewolf or witch a local priest even claimed it was god's punishment for losing the seven years war to protestant england but one thought permeated all of these theories the culprit of these attacks was not many wolves the populace increasingly agreed it was one great beast the beast a local official etienne elephant recommended that women and children only go to their fields in the company of armed men but his advice was impractical jibodoll was still a feudal agrarian economy and at the best of times farmers barely made enough to pay their landlords and sustain themselves meaning that the older men had to handle the crops while the women and children had to take the stock to pasture themselves so the killing accelerated eight attacks in eight days with four fatalities two of the victims were decapitated and some completely shredded so lafont called in the army captain jean-baptiste stu emil was a veteran of the seven years war and like the nation of france itself was struggling to dispel the feeling of dishonor brought on by defeat so in november of 1764 he descended on the province with a company of dragoons patrolling and organizing hunts he collected descriptions and used maps to determine the best way to patrol for the beast worry not was his message the army is here yet for three months dua mills troops simply couldn't catch the creature once he even had the beast in his sights but his soldiers spooked it before he could fire so in february of 1765 he organized a hunt with a new tactic twenty thousand peasants some too malnourished to stand after leaving their crops unharvested came to assist to beat the brush and drive the beast towards his men but the beast slipped across a river escaping through a gap in the screen that one village had neglected to guard the villagers claimed dubiously that they had been at their posts but the beast just shrugged off their bullets as the month stretched and dua mill's embarrassment grew he himself began promoting stories of the beast's enormous size and seemingly supernatural powers it was a handy excuse for failure and that's when the press started to take notice barred from reporting on politics the french press often fixated on stories of violence in the provinces the gorier the better this story was perfect french heroes hunting a monster women and children being torn apart newspapers in paris published exhaustive articles and gory illustrations said to be of the beast also naturalists in paris exercising a new interest in taxonomy and classification tried to unwind the mystery based on descriptions many claimed the beast was a hyena escaped from a noble's menagerie others said it was a bizarre hybrid between a lion and leopard or a dog wolf hybrid even king louis xv took notice particularly after a young boy jacques puerto fey attacked the beast with a bayonet when it tried to carry off his friend the king gave port dufay a reward and sent him to school at the crown's expense then later another present hero a pregnant mother named jean vale one fame for battling the beast bare-handed then stabbing it with a lance as it tried to drag away her six-year-old son duamil meanwhile was becoming more desperate he left out poisoned meat began using bodies of victims as bait and even planned to dress up his dragoons as women to invite an attack he craved the glory of killing the beast meanwhile the news went international newspapers in london and boston kept base with stories and one satirical article in britain claimed that the beast had swallowed the whole french army and mocked france's failure to kill it at this point the king decided to get directly involved and dispatched a pair of famous wolf hunters from normandy whose tactics of poisoning victims bodies and laying them out as bait got them run out of town next came king louise personal gun bearer and master of the hunt francois antoine along with a party of huntsman and king louie's own wolf hunting dogs in contrast to the wolf hunters he and his team treated the villagers with respect and partnered with them and also unlike the previous hunters he found the beast september 20th 1765. there had been a wolf sighted here yesterday big with the female and pops francois antoine waits for the hunting party to beat the animal out of the woods his musket quadruple loaded with powder a single ball and shot after what feels like an eternity he sees the wolf emerge it's so big he briefly mistakes it for a donkey he shoulders his musket aims the beast notices the movement and turns his head he fires staggering at the blast but felling the creature with a hit to the eye collecting himself he steps forward to inspect his kill to see this monster up close the beast rears stumbling and lunging toward him going into a full charge he can't reload in time and just as antoine seemingly accepts his fate his companion fires a second shot upon impact the creature slows still walking towards him then collapses the beast of shivodang is dead francois alton had the creature's skin mounted and brought it to court returning in triumph but the reception was lukewarm because it was just a wolf i mean a big wolf for sure but everyone did expect a hyena or a lion or some sort of monster still king louie was happy to bring this increasingly embarrassing episode to a close he gave antoine a purse of money along with a title and declared the whole thing over except it wasn't two months later the killings resumed was there more than one beast had a pup escaped or was antoine's wolf simply not the right one the crown offered no more support because according to the official line the beast was dead but the terror stretched on for another year and a half only stopping when a local woodsman gene chestel shot a wolf as it emerged from a thicket during a hunt attack survivors claimed that this not the earlier beast was the true culprit local doctors made extreme claims about its anatomy and developed folklore claiming shastel had shot it with the silver bullet stories also say shastel tried to bring the corpse to louis but by the time they arrived it had rotted and stank so the king callously ordered it buried but this kind of made sense it was a subversion of the official narrative promoting a local hero over the outsider antoine who represented a government that had abandoned them even as more people died in the fields but regardless the killings were finally over so what exactly was the beast the most likely explanation is there was no single beast shivodall was just overpopulated with wolves in fact rashes of wolf attacks with 20 deaths at a time happened almost every decade in france they'd even caused smaller panics in the past but ones that went unnoticed by the press in paris which in an odd roundabout way proves that the beast was more than just wolves it was the creation of rural folklore and the urban press religious panic and enlightenment thought and peasant fear and misery taken up as a hobby by the elite in other words the wolves did the killing but we made the monster happy halloween everyone once again thanks so much to nordvpn for sponsoring this episode if you want to protect your totally normal and not at all spooky internet history then you've got to give nordvpn a try with thousands of servers in over 60 countries military-grade onion over-encryption technology and a user-friendly lightweight chrome extension even an 18th century wolf fearing peasant could be securely browsing in seconds voila plus if you act now and use the code extra credits vpn.com extra credits you'll get 68 off a two-year plan that's under four bucks a month for 24 months if you're doing the math with a 30-day money-back guarantee and you'll receive a extra month of double encrypted protection absolutely free so secure your online self with nordvpn and never be scared about your internet security again we see you ahmed zion turk alicia bramble casey muscha dominic valenciana gunner clovis kyle murgatroyd and o reels one thanks so much for being legendary [Music] patrons [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Extra Credits

Views: 330,340

Rating: 4.9608345 out of 5

Keywords: extra credits, extra mythology, extra credits mythology, cryptids, the beast of gevaudan, beast of gevaudan, french mythology, halloween myths, monster myths, extra credits halloween, halloween, french folklore

Id: qDf93nFGZuc

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020