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--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
· Intro
0:00 · Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
0:04 · and a few love history too, this is the channel for you.
0:07 · Between 1764 and 1767 a huge beast terrorized the population in an 80 kilometer square area
· Background
0:18 · of southeastern France. It was described as being as big as a calf, with a huge maw
0:24 · of razor-sharp teeth, and in a three year period it killed more than a hundred people. And if you
0:29 · think that this is just a myth or a legend, it is not. There were dozens of witnesses,
0:34 · the attacks were well-documented, whatever it was it was something real. And while
0:41 · the attacks stopped in 1767, the Beast itself was never positively identified.
0:46 · The Beast of Gevaudan is an enduring mystery of history, and it deserves to be remembered.
0:53 · The first attack occurred in the summer of 1764, a young woman who was watching
· The Beast
0:59 · a herd of cattle was charged by a huge Beast, the likes of which she had never seen before.
1:04 · But the Bulls in the herd managed to fend it off with their horns and so she escaped with
1:10 · mere scratches. But she describes something fantastic! A beast with a huge broad chest,
1:16 · with a massive head and neck, its ears were on top of its head and they stuck straight up,
1:21 · looking almost like horns. It's great hound like maw was full of massive fangs. Its tail, unlike
1:27 · a wolf, was long and thin, it had huge claws and it moved extremely fast, and when it ran,
1:34 · it could leap enormous distances in each leap! The Beast attacked dozens of more people in the coming
1:43 · months. It seemed to favor women and children but it even attacked full-grown adult males. It
1:49 · would often attack people that were alone in the field, watching flocks or herds, but it also came
1:54 · into towns and took victims mere feet from their own doorsteps. It favored attacking the head,
2:01 · and most of the victims that were found and had their throats torn out. Sometimes it would carry
2:06 · the bodies away and virtually all of the bodies were at least partially eaten. In these horrific
2:11 · scenes the beasts would sometimes leave behind just rent limbs and body parts! And there were
2:17 · so many attacks that people became convinced that there must be more than one beast, because
2:22 · some of the reports made it sound like there was more than one attack occurring at the same time!
2:27 · Astoundingly in October of 1764, two hunters claimed to have come upon the Beast and shot it
2:34 · with their muskets at close range, several times. Each time to be staggered but astoundingly got up
2:41 · again and continued to move away, eventually escaping into the woods. And they were not the
2:45 · only ones who claimed to have shot the Beast at close range only to have it get up and walk away.
2:51 · In 1765, the story reached the attention of the King, Louis the 15th, who sent several known wolf
2:58 · hunters as well as his own Master of the Hunt, to hunt down and put an end to the beast. They killed
3:04 · a lot of wolves and at least one extraordinarily large wolf, but it turned out not to be the Beast,
3:10 · the attacks resumed, at least a dozen more people died in 1765. The beasts continued to terrorize
3:17 · the region clear until June of 1767, when a large hunt was organised by a local nobleman
3:23 · and a local farmer named Jean Chastel, shot another huge wolf the attack stopped and so
3:30 · it was assumed that that was the Beast of Gevaudan and Jean Chastel was a local hero.
3:35 · It is a terrifying story but were all these attacks really just the result of
3:41 · one extraordinarily large wolf? Well there are lots of theories about the Beast of Gevaudan,
3:47 · but three are most credible. The one that is most commonly accepted is that these attacks were
3:52 · simply the attacks of packs of wolves, and that public hysteria exaggerated the description of the
3:58 · animals. Wolves were known to attack livestock in Europe and people as well. Wolves were responsible
4:04 · for at least thousands of deaths in Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. But the
4:10 · patterns don't necessarily fit. Wolves generally attack weaker prey and very rarely attack, say,
4:16 · full-grown humans, who could defend themselves. An analysis of the attacks that were attributed
4:21 · to the Beasts of Gevaudan showed that that Beast attacked adults at a rate six times
4:27 · that of other known European wolf attacks. And it would be extraordinarily strange, for just
4:32 · wolves in one area to just change their behavior for just that one three year period of time.
4:38 · A second theory is that the Beast might have been a hybrid of a wolf and a dog,
· Mastiff
4:44 · possibly a mastiff. And that the Beast might have been actually trained by someone to attack people.
4:50 · Some descriptions make it sound like maybe the Beast was even outfitted with armor that was made
4:55 · from boars hide, which would explain why it could be shot and still run away. Also if it was trained
5:01 · and directed by a human, that would explain why its targets were different than you would
5:05 · expect of normal wolf or dog attacks. And the suspicion falls on the hero farmer, Jean Castel,
5:11 · who was known to own a very large red Mastiff. Now what his motive would have been is an interesting
5:17 · question, but he did become quite the hero when he supposedly killed the Beast. Perhaps he was
5:23 · just a serial murderer who was covering up his own crimes, or maybe he orchestrated the entire thing
5:29 · in order to get assistance in eradicating wolves, who would have been a threat to his livestock.
5:33 · A third theory was proposed recently by German naturalist Karl-Hans Taake. Taake theorizes that
· Lion
5:42 · the Beast of Gevaudan was in fact, a sub-adult male lion. That explains some things that the
5:48 · wolf, or wolf dog explanations just don't explain, like how it could leap long distances as it ran,
5:54 · or its use of claws in attacking, something that wolves and dogs normally do not do. And while a
6:01 · peasant of the 18th century likely knew what a lion was, the pictures that they had seen,
6:06 · the drawings would likely have been a full-grown adult male lion with full Mane's. And the sub
6:11 · adult lion looks quite different and it might not necessarily have been recognized. The pattern
6:17 · seems to fit, a sub-adult lion has a dark streak down its back, of course the long and thin tail
6:23 · sounds more like a lion than a wolf's. Sub-adult Lions also sometimes have spots. And the attack
6:29 · patterns and the victims that were chosen also are more fitting for a lion than they would be
6:35 · for a wolf. But if the Beast of Gevaudan was a lion how did it get to France? Well Taakes
6:43 · theory is that it escaped from a menagerie. See in the 18th century there was a lot of
6:48 · interest in Natural Sciences and so it was quite popular for wealthy people to have collections of
6:53 · exotic animals. The Beast of Gevaudan was likely brought to France as a lion cub that escaped.
7:00 · And the terror of this particular explanation is, that that means that the Beast of Gevaudan,
7:06 · who killed more than a hundred people, was the result of human carelessness.
7:12 · The Beast of Gevaudan is an enduring mystery and as there is no known genetic material that can be
7:19 · definitively tied to the Beast, we might never have a full answer. But maybe exactly what the
7:25 · Beast was is the wrong question. Maybe the more important question is what the story of the Beast
7:30 · of Gevaudan says about history at the time. The Beast of Gevaudan was the first real national
7:37 · news story, and it was greatly amplified by a nation news media that reveled in gory depictions
7:45 · of the attacks in crudely Illustrated printed broadsheets. And so it is more than the story of
7:50 · an animal, it's the story of people's perceptions of the attacks skewed, by the politics of an
7:56 · unsettled era, where the power structures and traditional modes of thought were in constant,
8:03 · and sometimes violent transition. It came in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment,
8:08 · and following the Scientific Revolution, and it represented the juxtaposition,
8:12 · the conflict between superstition and science, and people that were gripped in the conflicting
8:18 · ideas of a new scientific rationalism, but also an obsession with the occult. It represented
8:25 · the complexity of the relationships between the nobility and the peasantry at a time when those
8:30 · very relationships were under question, literally on the doorstep of the French Revolution. And it
8:36 · came in a period when religion and religious understanding was in flux, and as organized
8:41 · religion which had caused many of the Wars of the previous century was being rejected,
8:45 · there was still a belief in morality where God punished evil, perhaps even by sending
8:52 · a terrifying beast. And as the world was thrust into the modern era, it might not matter whether
9:00 · the Beast of Gevaudan was a wolf or a dog or a lion, because the sum of the people's
9:06 · fears at the time could have transformed any of those...into the terrifying Beast of Gevaudan.
· Outro
9:17 · I’m the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of history,
9:21 · short snippets have forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long. And if you did enjoy it then please
9:25 · go ahead and click that thumbs up button that is there on your left. If you have questions or
9:29 · comments would like to suggest another topic for the History Guy then feel free to write those in
9:33 · the comment section and I'll be happy to respond. And if you'd like five minutes more of forgotten
9:37 · history then all you need to do is click the subscribe button which is there on your right.

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
	·	Intro
0:00	·	Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
0:04	·	and a few love history too, this is the channel for you.
0:07	·	Between 1764 and 1767 a huge beast terrorized the population in an 80 kilometer square area
	·	Background
0:18	·	of southeastern France. It was described as being as big as a calf, with a huge maw
0:24	·	of razor-sharp teeth, and in a three year period it killed more than a hundred people. And if you
0:29	·	think that this is just a myth or a legend, it is not. There were dozens of witnesses,
0:34	·	the attacks were well-documented, whatever it was it was something real. And while
0:41	·	the attacks stopped in 1767, the Beast itself was never positively identified.
0:46	·	The Beast of Gevaudan is an enduring mystery of history, and it deserves to be remembered.
0:53	·	The first attack occurred in the summer of 1764, a young woman who was watching
	·	The Beast
0:59	·	a herd of cattle was charged by a huge Beast, the likes of which she had never seen before.
1:04	·	But the Bulls in the herd managed to fend it off with their horns and so she escaped with
1:10	·	mere scratches. But she describes something fantastic! A beast with a huge broad chest,
1:16	·	with a massive head and neck, its ears were on top of its head and they stuck straight up,
1:21	·	looking almost like horns. It's great hound like maw was full of massive fangs. Its tail, unlike
1:27	·	a wolf, was long and thin, it had huge claws and it moved extremely fast, and when it ran,
1:34	·	it could leap enormous distances in each leap! The Beast attacked dozens of more people in the coming
1:43	·	months. It seemed to favor women and children but it even attacked full-grown adult males. It
1:49	·	would often attack people that were alone in the field, watching flocks or herds, but it also came
1:54	·	into towns and took victims mere feet from their own doorsteps. It favored attacking the head,
2:01	·	and most of the victims that were found and had their throats torn out. Sometimes it would carry
2:06	·	the bodies away and virtually all of the bodies were at least partially eaten. In these horrific
2:11	·	scenes the beasts would sometimes leave behind just rent limbs and body parts! And there were
2:17	·	so many attacks that people became convinced that there must be more than one beast, because
2:22	·	some of the reports made it sound like there was more than one attack occurring at the same time!
2:27	·	Astoundingly in October of 1764, two hunters claimed to have come upon the Beast and shot it
2:34	·	with their muskets at close range, several times. Each time to be staggered but astoundingly got up
2:41	·	again and continued to move away, eventually escaping into the woods. And they were not the
2:45	·	only ones who claimed to have shot the Beast at close range only to have it get up and walk away.
2:51	·	In 1765, the story reached the attention of the King, Louis the 15th, who sent several known wolf
2:58	·	hunters as well as his own Master of the Hunt, to hunt down and put an end to the beast. They killed
3:04	·	a lot of wolves and at least one extraordinarily large wolf, but it turned out not to be the Beast,
3:10	·	the attacks resumed, at least a dozen more people died in 1765. The beasts continued to terrorize
3:17	·	the region clear until June of 1767, when a large hunt was organised by a local nobleman
3:23	·	and a local farmer named Jean Chastel, shot another huge wolf the attack stopped and so
3:30	·	it was assumed that that was the Beast of Gevaudan and Jean Chastel was a local hero.
3:35	·	It is a terrifying story but were all these attacks really just the result of
3:41	·	one extraordinarily large wolf? Well there are lots of theories about the Beast of Gevaudan,
3:47	·	but three are most credible. The one that is most commonly accepted is that these attacks were
3:52	·	simply the attacks of packs of wolves, and that public hysteria exaggerated the description of the
3:58	·	animals. Wolves were known to attack livestock in Europe and people as well. Wolves were responsible
4:04	·	for at least thousands of deaths in Europe in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. But the
4:10	·	patterns don't necessarily fit. Wolves generally attack weaker prey and very rarely attack, say,
4:16	·	full-grown humans, who could defend themselves. An analysis of the attacks that were attributed
4:21	·	to the Beasts of Gevaudan showed that that Beast attacked adults at a rate six times
4:27	·	that of other known European wolf attacks. And it would be extraordinarily strange, for just
4:32	·	wolves in one area to just change their behavior for just that one three year period of time.
4:38	·	A second theory is that the Beast might have been a hybrid of a wolf and a dog,
	·	Mastiff
4:44	·	possibly a mastiff. And that the Beast might have been actually trained by someone to attack people.
4:50	·	Some descriptions make it sound like maybe the Beast was even outfitted with armor that was made
4:55	·	from boars hide, which would explain why it could be shot and still run away. Also if it was trained
5:01	·	and directed by a human, that would explain why its targets were different than you would
5:05	·	expect of normal wolf or dog attacks. And the suspicion falls on the hero farmer, Jean Castel,
5:11	·	who was known to own a very large red Mastiff. Now what his motive would have been is an interesting
5:17	·	question, but he did become quite the hero when he supposedly killed the Beast. Perhaps he was
5:23	·	just a serial murderer who was covering up his own crimes, or maybe he orchestrated the entire thing
5:29	·	in order to get assistance in eradicating wolves, who would have been a threat to his livestock.
5:33	·	A third theory was proposed recently by German naturalist Karl-Hans Taake. Taake theorizes that
	·	Lion
5:42	·	the Beast of Gevaudan was in fact, a sub-adult male lion. That explains some things that the
5:48	·	wolf, or wolf dog explanations just don't explain, like how it could leap long distances as it ran,
5:54	·	or its use of claws in attacking, something that wolves and dogs normally do not do. And while a
6:01	·	peasant of the 18th century likely knew what a lion was, the pictures that they had seen,
6:06	·	the drawings would likely have been a full-grown adult male lion with full Mane's. And the sub
6:11	·	adult lion looks quite different and it might not necessarily have been recognized. The pattern
6:17	·	seems to fit, a sub-adult lion has a dark streak down its back, of course the long and thin tail
6:23	·	sounds more like a lion than a wolf's. Sub-adult Lions also sometimes have spots. And the attack
6:29	·	patterns and the victims that were chosen also are more fitting for a lion than they would be
6:35	·	for a wolf. But if the Beast of Gevaudan was a lion how did it get to France? Well Taakes
6:43	·	theory is that it escaped from a menagerie. See in the 18th century there was a lot of
6:48	·	interest in Natural Sciences and so it was quite popular for wealthy people to have collections of
6:53	·	exotic animals. The Beast of Gevaudan was likely brought to France as a lion cub that escaped.
7:00	·	And the terror of this particular explanation is, that that means that the Beast of Gevaudan,
7:06	·	who killed more than a hundred people, was the result of human carelessness.
7:12	·	The Beast of Gevaudan is an enduring mystery and as there is no known genetic material that can be
7:19	·	definitively tied to the Beast, we might never have a full answer. But maybe exactly what the
7:25	·	Beast was is the wrong question. Maybe the more important question is what the story of the Beast
7:30	·	of Gevaudan says about history at the time. The Beast of Gevaudan was the first real national
7:37	·	news story, and it was greatly amplified by a nation news media that reveled in gory depictions
7:45	·	of the attacks in crudely Illustrated printed broadsheets. And so it is more than the story of
7:50	·	an animal, it's the story of people's perceptions of the attacks skewed, by the politics of an
7:56	·	unsettled era, where the power structures and traditional modes of thought were in constant,
8:03	·	and sometimes violent transition. It came in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment,
8:08	·	and following the Scientific Revolution, and it represented the juxtaposition,
8:12	·	the conflict between superstition and science, and people that were gripped in the conflicting
8:18	·	ideas of a new scientific rationalism, but also an obsession with the occult. It represented
8:25	·	the complexity of the relationships between the nobility and the peasantry at a time when those
8:30	·	very relationships were under question, literally on the doorstep of the French Revolution. And it
8:36	·	came in a period when religion and religious understanding was in flux, and as organized
8:41	·	religion which had caused many of the Wars of the previous century was being rejected,
8:45	·	there was still a belief in morality where God punished evil, perhaps even by sending
8:52	·	a terrifying beast. And as the world was thrust into the modern era, it might not matter whether
9:00	·	the Beast of Gevaudan was a wolf or a dog or a lion, because the sum of the people's
9:06	·	fears at the time could have transformed any of those...into the terrifying Beast of Gevaudan.
	·	Outro
9:17	·	I’m the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, 5 minutes of history,
9:21	·	short snippets have forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long. And if you did enjoy it then please
9:25	·	go ahead and click that thumbs up button that is there on your left. If you have questions or
9:29	·	comments would like to suggest another topic for the History Guy then feel free to write those in
9:33	·	the comment section and I'll be happy to respond. And if you'd like five minutes more of forgotten
9:37	·	history then all you need to do is click the subscribe button which is there on your right.