Between 1764 and 1767, something killed roughly a hundred people in the Margeride mountains of south-central France, mostly women and children tending stock, in attacks so ferocious the king sent professional hunters and dragoons. Contemporary accounts describe a wolf-like animal larger than any wolf. It was finally shot in 1767 and the killings stopped. What it actually was, an unusually bold wolf or wolves, a wolf-dog, something escaped from a menagerie, is still argued by historians. The deaths were entirely real and well documented; the nature of the beast is the mystery.
The Gévaudan, Lozère (Occitanie, France)
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