On July 1, 2024, La Poste issued a stamp on the beast of Gévaudan which sowed panic in this region between 1764 and 1767.
A beast, or beasts, a collective panic and a remote region of France, low mountains, forests and moors where herds are grazed. The end of the War too, that of Seven Years which deprived France of part of its colonies and reduced its European prestige, and which left a void in the newspapers of the time, therefore hungry for new information and ready to relay sensational news items. At the beginning of the summer of 1764, a series of attacks by an unknown beast began in Gévaudan, current departments of Lozère and Haute-Loire, a series which would last three long years and, according to various sources, between 88 and 124 victims. The intervention of a regiment of dragoons under the direction of Captain Duhamel did not make it possible to stop the brutal deaths, and the Bishop of Mende, cousin of a minister of King Louis prayer and penance, denouncing the beast as a divine punishment. Large hunts are organized and exploits mark the chronicle, in particular that of the young shepherd Jacques Portefaix who, with other children, repels the attack of the beast, then that of Marie-Jeanne Vallet, who will be called "the Maid of Gévaudan”. But the king, feeling his authority called into question by an uncontrollable panic and by the articles flourishing in the press, notably the Courrier d'Avignon and the Gazette de France, which the Court was fighting over, sent the greatest hunter of at the time, Jean-Charles d'Enneval, then his own arquebus holder, François Antoine. But it was a peasant poacher, Jean Chastel, who, in 1767, finally killed the feared beast and brought peace to the region.
The story joins that of other beasts, other panics which, from the Ancien Régime to modern times, have fueled popular chronicles. And it also touches on the complicated coexistence of human societies with the wolf, a mythical animal, admired as much as it is feared, often perceived as a symbol of what is wild in us. It reappeared in France in the early 1990s.
