31.10.15

October 1765: King meets Beast



King Louis XV and his court in Versailles look upon the infamous Beast of the Gévaudan.
At the beginning of October, François Antoine’s immense Chazes wolf was presented at the court of King Louis XV in Versailles, France.


A visitor to the court from England named Horace Walpole, the Earl of Orford, wrote about the occasion to an acquaintance named John Chute, Esquire: 


“In the Queen's antechamber we foreigners and the foreign ministers were shown the famous beast of the Gévaudan, just arrived, and covered with a cloth, which two chasseurs [pageboys] lifted up. It is an absolute wolf, but uncommonly large, and the expression of agony and fierceness remains strongly imprinted on its dead jaws.” 


In another letter [Walpole’s many letters are valued for their “slice-of-life” depictions of the eighteenth century], written to the Right Honorable Lady Hervey, he wrote,


“Fortune bestowed on me a much more curious sight than a set of princes; the wild beast of the Gévaudan, which is killed, and actually is in the Queen's antechamber. It is a thought less than a leviathan, and the beast in the Revelations, and has not half so many wings, and yes, and talons, as I believe they have, or will have some time or other; this being possessed but of two eyes, four feet, and no wings at all. It is as fine a wolf as a commissary in the late war, except, notwithstanding all the stories, that it has not devoured near so many persons. In short, Madam, now it is dead and come, a wolf it certainly was, and not more above the common size than Mrs. Cavendish is. It has left a dowager and four young princes.”

Meanwhile in the Gévaudan, royal gunbearer François Antoine spent October tracking down and destroying the Beast’s alleged mate and pups. But did he get them all?

Image credit:"Wolf of Chazes" by Unknown - Unnamed French Periodical. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wolf_of_Chazes.jpg#/media/File:Wolf_of_Chazes.jpg