EPISODE 93: The Beast of Gevaudan

History on Fire

Daniele Bolelli

Society & Culture

4.8 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2022

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“This animal is a monster whose father is a lion; it remains open what the mother is.” — Jean-Baptiste Boulanger Duhamel

“I would be tempted to imagine that we are dealing with a witch, or the devil in person, if only I could believe it.” — Jean-Baptiste Boulanger Duhamel

It’s the 1760s, in the Gevaudan area of South Central France. Imagine being a kid. Maybe 12 years old. Maybe as young as 8. You have heard the rumors. Maybe, you saw the mangled bodies. There’s a monster out there. A monster that hunts people and eats them. It has killed people in the woods, on the pastures, and even just a few feet out of their homes. Time and time again, the men have gone out to try to put an end to the monster’s reign of terror, but time and time again the monster has outsmarted them. Some say it’s an animal that escaped a private zoo—a lion or a hyena, or something else you have never seen. Some people say it’s a giant wolf. Some say a demon that can’t be killed by bullets. Maybe, it’s a werewolf.

Just knowing that this monster wanders the countryside, right around your village… that would be terrifying. With this bloodthirsty beast roaming around, the door to your house doesn’t seem that solid anymore, and any suspicious noise outside can make you jump. So, it’s more than legitimate for you to think this is scary. But the reality is that this is nothing. Things don’t get truly scary until you take into account the fact that someone has to go outside and take care of the animals. And I don’t mean simply walking to the barn a few yards away from your house. I mean having to leave the relative safety of your home, go out there in the forest, and take them to the pastures, possibly for days at a time. Authorities have been warning people to stay home. Yeah… right… that’s a sweet concept but is practically impossible. If you stay home, your whole family starves. Your father and mother have other jobs that require their presence on the land. Taking animals to pasture… that’s your job. If you are lucky, you get to band with few other friends your age, and tend to the animals together, while you pray that the monster doesn’t choose to come for you. Think about being a 10-year old kid, and that’s your lot in life.

This is the story of a monster that killed in the neighborhood of 100 people during the 1760s in France as well as the story of the men sent to hunt it. In the course of this episode, we’ll tackle the entire saga of the monster’s reign of terror, the mystery of the monster’s identity, and the role that the press played in shaping the events. Honorable mentions to the film Brotherhood of the Wolf, Georges St. Pierre, Alan Watts & The Wisdom of Insecurity.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

If you’d like to go to Japan for a historical tour with yours truly as a guide, please check out https://geeknationtours.com/tours/signature-battlefield-series-classic-samurai-from-the-gempei-war-to-the-mongol-invasions-2023/

Big thank you to Athletic Greens for sponsoring this episode. Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit https://athleticgreens.com/HOF

Transcript

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0:00.0	Whether you like history or not, if you care about bravery, wisdom, passion, larger than life characters and some of the most emotionally intense moments in human experience, you have come to the right place.
0:11.0	The Ellie Bollelli is a university history professor, writer and martial artist, and he shall be your guide and a journey to the place where history and epic come along.
0:42.0	Let's go to the history of fire.
0:51.0	Hello and welcome to this new episode of history and fire.
0:58.0	I want to give a big, big thank you to those of you who decided to support me on Patreon. That helps more than words can say. I'm really super grateful for all your support.
1:12.0	In an ideal world, I would like Patreon to grow so that I rely less and less on any other factor. I don't have to flood the episodes with 10,000 ads. I can, you know, I'll have a few ads here and there, but primarily rely on listener support.
1:29.0	That would allow me to stay more independent and run the show exactly the way I want to. So those of you folks who have supported Deep Thank You, those of you who are thinking about it and want to join this brave band of heroes in supporting the show, beside having 3 versions of the show.
1:49.0	Another benefit of Patreon, even at the most basic level, is that you're going to get a bunch of bonus content, at least once a month, I'm going to put out a new mini episode.
1:59.0	Mini episodes are more in the 20-40 minute range, usually. Still a lot of fun, and I've been having a blast creating some of them. The next one coming up next month is going to be entitled The Trial of the Zombie Pop. I think the title itself should be inviting.
2:19.0	And I'm not even making it up, it's almost not quite so, but you know what I mean, it's a really wild tale. So there's bonus content, add 3 episodes. If you guys want to check it out, I would be deeply thankful.
2:32.0	It's patreon.com forward slash historian fire. Again, patron that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com forward slash historian fire. I'm going to also put a link in the episode notes at the history on fire podcast website.
2:51.0	Speaking of patreon, big thank you to some sweet folks who donated at the highest possible level. Your generosity is amazing. So shout out to Marc Chang, Chimi Moxam, Gail Goodwin, Jesus Renteria, Jofrit Olveson. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
3:12.0	Also, I want to let you know about something that may be going down in April of 2023. I've partnered with Geek Nation tours. These folks are going to put together a tour of Japan, focused on the history of the samurai from the Game Pay Wars down to the Mongol invasion.
3:31.0	So if you want to check it out, I'll include a link in the episode notes. You can also Google Geek Nation tours, Bolleli, samurai. I'm super excited because this would be the very first time that I get to go to Japan.
3:46.0	And not only see everything that Japan has to offer, but really explore the history. So I'm very thrilled to be able to play a role in helping to guide this tour.
3:56.0	If this is something that may interest you, please check out the link. And if we get enough signups off to Japan, we go in April. So very excited about that.
4:08.0	Particularly because I think we're going to be able to sneak also a visit to the temple that I discuss in the episodes that I did about EQ Sojourn.
4:16.0	So that's like Christmas morning for me. I'm really, really looking forward to this.
4:24.0	Last thing I want to tell you before we get the episode going, I've never done midralls before, but because usually once I put all my ads at the beginning, but these days pretty much every company requires that you do midralls.
4:41.0	So just before we're at some point during the episode, roughly around halfway, I will have a quick break for an ad. Now, none of the ads exist in the versions of the episode that is on Patreon.
4:56.0	But for the public feed, that's how it's going to be. So I already want to thank so much at the late green for sponsoring this episode.
5:05.0	And now, without further ado, let's go say history on fire.
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