In the second half of the 18th century, Gévaudan (current Lozère) was a poor and isolated province, a country of little shepherds and wolves. Then a Beast spreads terror. What is it ? Why does it attack children first? What traps have we invented? The Beast may not be alone... Faced with attacks, some react heroically, such as the young Portefaix, 12, who manages to hunt the animal to save a smaller one. His achievement is known throughout the kingdom and the king himself gives him a reward.

However, faced with the failure of the hunts, fear and panic spread. We imagine the most formidable monsters, half-man, half-animal. The king's dragons and the best hunters in the kingdom are called to the rescue. It takes many years, from 1764 to 1767, to overcome the Beast… but do we really know what this extraordinary animal was? Is there still a mystery?

Other Beasts, in different regions of France, have been as deadly as this one. It is however the only one to have remained famous: from Gévaudan to the Court of Louis XV in Versailles, the historian Jean-Paul Chabrol takes us on a strange adventure where imagination and terror aroused by the ravages of the Beast mingle.

The illustrator Frédéric Cartier-Lange was particularly inspired by engravings and gazettes of the time to reconstruct a universe on the borders of legend and fantasy.

Year of publication of the presented edition : 2020  (71 pages)

Editor : Alcide Jeunesse