Killer(s) Of The Beasts of Gevaudan
A New Light Shed on The Mysterious ‘Beast’ or ‘Beasts’ of Gevaudan During The Last Decades of Ancient Regime France
The Background
Les Grands Jours d’Auvergne (1665)
This old French phrase is translated as the ‘Great Days of Auvergne’. The Auvergne is the province that covers the Central Mountains in which is included the Gevaudan area. At the Gevaudan is not yet at the center of the largest hunt that is our story but not until a century later. A Great Day would be equivalent to a Great Trial.
Louis XIV was faced with many challenges to his absolutist power coming from the middle aristocracy. Since he was not going to bow to that latent rejection, he decided to punish the aristocrats of Auvergne who were guilty of tormenting the local peasant population (12000 complaints were received)