My Son is planning on taking a history degree course in the near future, after leaving the British Military he has become disenchanted with his current job in I.T, and following my love of history programmes that we used to watch when he was growing up, programmes similar to yours (on television, no internet or UA-cam then), it just goes to show that History is not a dying interest or career, he hopes to go on and teach history, I am behind him 100%, if I was younger and in better health I would join him at university. Whilst the subject of this video is not my cup of tea I applaud your enthusiasm and knowledge. 👍
I really enjoyed your impact segment of your video. That part is usually my favorite part so that I can apply the lessons of history to today. Fantastic job!
I find the Beast of Gevaudan to be a fascinating story and I've studied this one for a very long time. I have still not figured out what it was, and the best anyone can do is a guess. I believe that is what is so intriguing about the story. The best guess I can give would be (Maybe Spanish) War Dog. The Spanish mastiff had a weight of 270 pounds and stood 3 and a half to 4 feet tall, or at least the stories tell of this size. Ever seen the size of an English Mastiff? Celtic warriors used them, and they were larger than men. On Colombus 2nd trip he took to battle the natives with 20 Mastiff and a couple hundred conquistadors against thousands of natives. It is said that the sheer terror from just 20 dog's ripping men apart was what won them the battle. (I'm sure the black power rifles were a Boone also) Colombus said that ONE of the dogs was worth 15 of the soldiers and their bite was so powerful they could rip an arm from a man and crush a skull inside their massive jaw's. Those dogs were bread and trained for war, just imagine something so powerful, trained and smart in the countryside and the people have only been around average size dogs. The giant mastiff would have had rust colored fur, a black stripe down it's back, a bushy tail and if you look at the mouth it does look like a pig snout. No claws though.
Well, that's no ordinary beast! That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered beast you ever set eyes on! Actually, my guess is a lioness, not a "juvenile male lion." No mane, and the lionesses are the hunters. They go for the throat.
Lions dont have long snouts like a wolf, though. Wasnt a wolf though, either. Cant be a hyena with that tail, either. 🤔 Maybe some kind of hybrid animal bornin the wild... Like a hyena/wolf hybrid. ...maybe. Thad be my best guess.
@@sagesheahan6732 Hyena/Wolf hybrid is impossible as the genes aren't close enough to allow fertilizartion to occur. In my opinion, as someone who has studied prehistoric beasts, I enjoy taking a look at two very similarly described animals. Hyeanodon gigas and Amphicyon ingens. They described them both as wolf like with long tails, very broad and muscular, and larger then the grey wolf by a long shot. Maybe the beast never ran into humans, so thought of them as an easy killing source of food. Not to add a lot of the depictions give the beast slightly shorter legs making me think it even more as a lot of primitive mammals had slightly smaller legs, even Direwolves did. However Direwolves lived in NA and SA, not EU.
I've read about this story over the years, and it has a reputation as the greatest real-life werewolf incident of all time. And yet, the descriptions of the beast and its behavior all say "feline, feline" to me. I think History Guy has it right when he notes that most people wouldn't have recognized a lion on sight. This is a time before photography when I suspect many artists who drew or painted lions had never actually seen one either, and some of their depictions were pretty far off the mark.
except the auopsy report on Chastel's kill concludes without a doubt that it was a canid. And contrary to popular believe peasants knew what a lion looks like, not all but most of them did. The lion was and still is an extremely present symbol in Europe: in heraldry, in religious art etc. You got to have someone who saw the beast that went “Hey that’s a lion!” at some point, but no one did. There even were people send from Versailles at some point, that had certainly seen realistic artistic depictions of lions or even actual lions in the royal menagerie. There are far more concrete evidences pointing toward one or several canids (wolf, dog, hybrid etc) than a lion in the end
@@martynaozog8060 What the "autopsy" reported is hardly of any relevance, when you can't even be sure they got the right animal in the first place. And he's 100% right when he says that every detail offered about how the beast allegedly moved and attacked matches a large feline to a T, while it hardly fits the idea of one or more canids.
@@martynaozog8060 Wouldn't the people be more knowledgeable about what a dog or wolf looks like? If it really was just a wolf, you'd think people would say "There's a large wolf that's killing people!" My first suspicion would be that the animal was not native to the region and people were not familiar with it.
@@martynaozog8060 that's male lions with that long mane. I never seen lions drawing, statue etc without the long mane in Europe. If it's a wolf they would say it's a large wolf. Wolf or dogs is way too common in Europe. It must be something they never seen in Europe.
Historically speaking, wolf attacks seem to occur at times of famine and economic collapse, and environmental stress. That would be consisted with the circumstances surrounding these attacks. The fact that children were targeted is also consistent with wolf attacks. The frequency of the attacks suggests to me that multiple wolves were involved.
This is incredible information because my wife and myself have been trying to find an explanation of what we encoutered on November 20, 2011. North Pennsylvania. Big, Big, eyes! Incredibly long claws shaped like eagle talens but huge 10" long or so. Ears on top of its head appeared to be bat like. Black not reflectable in light. It jumped probably 60 feet. Now I'm freaked out!
No hyena theory? I heard a theory it was a hyena that escaped a menagerie. It would explain the ears and the neck in the description and hyenas do attack people
david Bruce first, you may have seen a TV special but nothing assures all it told was true. Second, something was killed and stuffed but there’s no modern evidence of what it was nor any guarantee it was “THE Beast”. Third, very little about how Beast was described seems to match with a hyena. Hyenas don’t have long fangs, don’t have long claws, don’t move in quick large jumps and don’t ambush their preys aiming for the throat and head. Only big felines do.
david Bruce also, if you’ll watch the video on this very same channel about other notorious “maneater” beasts in history, you’ll notice an impressive amount of similarities with this story... and they were all big felines.
History Guy, I KNOW that tune you got playing in the background, meaning, I've heard it before. Who is it? I've tried to find it, but with no lyrics, I have nothing to go on but a video ... and still nothing to go on. Good stuff HG, keep`em comin.
There is that prehistoric extinct wolf-like animal that fits the description to a tee. I can't remember the name, but it begins with a 'h'. It's possible that some animals still lived in those times back then, and maybe not all of them went extinct.
There are some well-founded comments on this informative video. I hope I can explain a few aspects clearly even though I am not a native speaker of English. 1) The assumption that a human killer, with or without a trained carnivore, had killed humans in Gévaudan, is based on novels from the 19th and 20th centuries. The French officials who investigated the attacks in the 1760s were no less intelligent than we are today: no official, no hunter, no surviving victim reported any evidence that a human could have been involved as an attacker. The texts handed down from the 18th century about the attacks contain several hundred thousand words. If you pick out individual words or sentences from this enormous volume of texts without regarding the context you can support any explanation, including the activity of a human killer. But this is not the way to get close to historical reality. 2) Several commentors point to an alleged hyena in Gévaudan. The decisive aspect in narrowing down the range of species in question is the reported behavior of the Beast. This behavior has been comprehensively documented: it excludes all carnivore families with one exception: Felidae, the cat family. Just one example among very many is that the Beast attacked horses by jumping on their back. This is the typical behavior of a big cat to bring down big ungulates. The location and exact dimensions of the injuries the Beast inflicted on one of these horses were documented. Reports that the beast behaved "like a cat", as well as the lion hypothesis date back to Gévaudan times: the Comte de Morangiès and the dragoon officer Duhamel referred to this species. Lions can survive European winters: up to historic times they lived in habitats with cold winters and snow cover. 3) It is logically impossible that the carnivore shot by Chastel in June 1767 was the Beast. The authors of the so-called Marin report claimed that the animal only partially resembled a wolf. But in their very detailed text they described a normal wolf (I have summarized this in one of my articles on ResearchGate: DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10323.35360). This wolf was possibly killed at a time when the Beast was already dead. It is not surprising that the Beast’s carcass was never found: large parts of Gévaudan were inaccessible to man; carnivores had endless potential hiding places. Chastel’s wolf was one of about half a dozen wolves which were arbitrarily selected and presented as “the Beast”.
In my opinion it sounds more like a leopard than a lion. Lions in the wild will typically leave their kills where they kill them and eat them on the spot. Nothing's gonna come up and steal food from a lion, so there's no reason to drag it off. Leopards are typically solitary ambush hunters, and it's very common for them to drag their prey off. In the wild they even pull them up trees, it's ridiculous. A black leopard would've looked like a nightmarish monster to someone who'd never even heard of one, in a place with no big cats. Canines are a lot more likely to go for an appendage like an arm or a leg than right for the throat, because it's a lot harder to reach for less agile canines, especially wolves. They'd want to grab your leg from behind, like they do on their natural prey. That's not to say a canine wouldn't rip your throat out if they got the chance, but it also seems likely that people would've noticed a wolf instantly, even a large wolf. Just speculation, but sounds a lot more like a leopard to me than anything else.
There was a documentary a few years back, saw it once and have never seen it again however it’s conclusion was this: the beast was most likely a trained, escaped Hyena from a collector , this animal fits the discretions and would be less known to your average person. While the attacks occurred the local clergy made bank telling the locals it was a plague from god. After time passed, the “trainer” said the he prayed to god, knelt in the forest and the beast walked up to him. He was the able to shoot it with the silver bullet he had made. So basilisks trained animal walked up to him and he shot it. He was in league with the local church and both damaged the villagers for prophet and control.
I watched this presentation once and long before I’d seen half of it had calculated for a lion. At the end you submitted it may have been a juvenile lion. I thought that an interesting hypothesis. Then you began discounting the theory of lions. Before you’d finished that thought line, I’d come up with another theory. Adult male lions of Tsavo are maneless an-nd coincidentally they are known man eaters...an-nd they are abnormally larger than savanna/maned lions. A Tsavo (pronounced Sãvō) lion would tick off quite a number of “yes” boxes. In fact they might tick off points that you may not be aware of. Tsavo lions are notably lighter and possible spots are much less obvious. If you like my theories - let me know.
I watched a documentary that hypothesized the same exact lion theory but it suggested a hyena that had escaped. Close enough to a wolf but larger and a harder to identify animal for a peasant at the time
It remain strange based on the climate of the era Either hes savage, and its just impossible he survive any french winter ( especially on gevaudan region ) Or hes tamed, and someone take care of the beast Im not a big cat specialist, but we could suppose than -20c is far too cold for theim i guess
I always wondered if this story was an exotic animal imported for some circus or menagerie that got turned loose. Either a large cat, which fits with the claws, ears and tail. Or an American Grizzly Bear. Which fits with the shear scale and ability to shrug off musket shots.
The lion is possible,due to the fact that lions,where found far north as Greece,and in parts of Russia. There’s even a story ( unknown if is true,but maybe possible ) that lions ,and or tigers,where once found as far north as Finland.but it has never been proven.
Wow, this sounds just like that movie Brotherhood of the Wolf. I’m wondering if this is where they got the idea for it. I think the movie is even French with English subtitles.
I saw A History Channel episode on Werewolves that stated it possibly could have been an escaped Hyena that the Nobles kept as exotic pets or zoos in France.
Aremor that is similar to the lion theory. I am dubious, though, as the pattern of the attacks was not consistent with hyena behavior. And hyenas have short, bushy tails. But it is quite possible that it was an exotic animal imported for a menagerie.
The hyena theory stays the most popular animal in the ‘the beast of Gévaudan was an exotic animal’ theory which is not among the most popular theories. The most popular theories include a wolf or a wolf pack gone wrong and man-eating (though that’s debatable because there’s a lot of incoherency with the wolf theory in general and a lot of people who worked on this case for years are certain it could not have been a wolf). And a hybrid between a wolf and a dog, it works with the autopsy report of Chastel’s kill (which concludes without equivoke to a canid without identifying a wolf which the man practicing it would have been able to do considering the huge presence of wolves in Auvergne/Gévaudan at the time)
My theory is that it was a local & somehow isolated small population, (waning, with only a handful of members left), localized species of the very, very last Dire Wolfs. Dire Wolfs were 50-100% larger than the modern wolf. Without DNA, this or any other theory cannot be proven. Hopefully at some point in the future, pre-fossilized remains may be found in a preserved enough state, and will close this case.
The theories I've read about on this generally conclude it was a hyena probably imported for someone's personal menagerie. Then either escaping or periodically being allowed to roam free.
Siberian Tiger is a possibility as well, rarely there are the whites which the stripes sometimes show up as spots and tigers are much more prone than lions to be man-eaters.
I think it was a hyena or jackal. It was displayed for a few years after being killed. Taxidermy wasn't as good 200+ years ago as it is today. The evidence points to an imported and possibly trained and/or escaped hyena or jackal. I may be wrong, but many nobles imported animals from other countries.
I predicted his third theory before he even explained it, almost every word. Including the fact that they may have heard about lions, and saw drawings of them, but would have no idea of what a lion actually looked like. And that's if they had even heard of lions. People back then are no different than now, they didn't have much of an interest in knowing things, at least beyond their own bubbles.
Have you noticed when you look at the Ishtar Gate from Babylon that it has dragons and lions? Notice European coats of arms feature the dragon not the lion. Why would European heraldry feature an African beast they never saw? Or this story?
The thing being left out is quite a few of the beasts’ victims were sexually assaulted, as I understand it. I’m going for the trained animal and the serial killer farmer. Heat is on, he shoots his accomplice, gets to be a hero, murders stop.
I see things haven't changed much since the 18th Century, in a way. There are still wealthy eccentric people that still buy exotic animals, thinking they can be pets and it is a very dangerous assumption. These animals are cute when they are young and to a certain extent are trainable because they are dependent on the human raising them. That is until the animal grows up and is no longer controllable by humans and it realizes that they are stronger and or higher on the food chain than a human. There was a terrible example of this back in 2009 were a couple had raised a chimp. When the chimp was a large adult, something set it off when a friend came over to visit and attacked her. The chimp, bit off all her fingers, blinded her and mauled her face. The chimp was shot by police and killed. This is only one example and more and more people are trying to buy exotic animals and it is not just the wealthy. Thing is, most of these animals are released when they get to large for the person to handle them and that turns in to an environmental disaster. Many of these animals (this includes reptiles, fish, birds and others) have no natural predators to keep them in check. Florida, is now overrun by exotic snakes like pythons and boas. Those snakes got to large for there handler and they let them go in the wild where the conditions are similar to there habitat and reproduce. That is not the only problem there, some of these snakes are breading with other local snakes and creating hybrid snakes. Recently a collection of snakes species in an area of Florida, showed the genetic signature of the Indian rock python present in at least 13 snakes. That species is smaller, faster and arguably more aggressive than its big cousin, and thrives on higher and drier ground. Burmese pythons are more at home in the water. Even when they are kept in lab environments, some of these animals, some extremely dangerous and poisonous. This happened during hurricane Katrina when a bunch of snakes, like the Black Mamba used to create anti-venom escaped. It is bad enough that we have our own species of dangerous animals here in the US, we do not need to import more because of some peoples twisted love affair with exotics that they wind up finding that they can not handle or due to their carelessness, the animals escape. Due to these people, there is a large black market out there that is more than happy to capture and sell these creatures illegally. Not just here but all over the world. Some people are just stupid and can't understand why wild animals can not become pets.
Well said, thanks man! But remembered and seen by as many as possible.. and then remembered and seen by as many as possible.. and then... 😋 For the sake of us all whenever we are. Learn good honest and honestish stuff and take some time to learn about and also sometime appropriate later make some effort to remember those who came before you. Thank you.
I had a most unusual frightening adventure on a Mountain in Western Maryland ,during the holidays from school in December and January.my friends and I were camping next to a huge background a stone cliff. Trying to fall asleep with out freezing my ass i saw a pair of glowing eyes on the ledge over our tent ,being bored and curious about this I wanted to see if they would move around up there So I shot my 30/30 towards it and then they jumped out and then up and I'm going nuts trying to wake up my friends.We were firing on the eyes as they moved ,they went up as if in a tree . Trying to find out what it was ,we stopped shooting at the eyes ,we could not find them anywhere.At day light we carefully climbed up to find what we were shooting .We found some kind of paw prints in the muddy snow and ice the area was torn up,we found nothing more it stills bothers me when I am in the wood
Those where real humans, free hunters gatherers... Not peasents under unknown King leader and a murdering religion that where keeping them uneducated and feared demonising whatever they could not explain!!!
@@nicholaschristophorou3087 How to dehumanise generations of people that lived in those times. "Real humans"....Wow. Those "free" hunter/gatherers lived a life where they were in constant contact with the animals they painted. They hunted them, and them carried them back to camp where they skinned, eviscerated and dressed them. Of course they knew what those animals looked like. Lions hadn't lived in Europe for thousands of years if indeed that's what it was. The witnesses only had a few minutes to see and describe it and like the narrator said, most people would have been familiar, through pictures, of the long maned male lions and not even realised that females didn't have that mane. You're so wrapped up in hate, you can't even make a comment about an anomalie of those times without bringing your own twisted vision of human history.
@Dr. M. H. Well, I can only think of one that has it as a tenet of their faith. The same one who's founder had sex with a 9 year old, bought and sold black slaves and had a man tortured for money. That's not "religion's" fault.
Conan Doyle's tale was mainly inspired by a Herefordshire Marcher Country legend about 'Black Vaughan', the wicked nobleman of Hergest who terrorised the neighbourhood after his death. But given Doyle's interest in occult law and his other wide ranging interests, who's to say that he didn't know about the Gevaudan incident? Private menageries go back a long, long way with English (and doubtless other European) nobility. One medieval king had a big collection at the Tower of London and, way back in the 1100's there was one at Chillington, near Wolverhampton. One day a panther escaped, and was killed just as it prepared to pounce on a woman and her child. So, yes, the idea THG puts forward has a definite ring of plausibility to it. Love the series. Does THG read the posts?
It pisses me off so much when people try to disregard hundreds of witness reports as “simply exaggerated hysteria”- like, orrrr maybe you weren’t there and have zero reason to believe they were mistaken other than the fact that you don’t like not having a clean and straightforward answer?
I can confirm that ! and also that summarising the story in less than 10 minutes is a hell of a feat that deserves to be remembered ;-) For those interested in details of the story, French readers can turn to François Fabre's "La Bête du Gévaudan" éditions De Borée - Terre de poche
When you listed the described characteristics of the beast my first idea was: "That sounds exactly like a lion". What many people don't know is that there are lions that simply have no manes. The Tsavo Man-Eaters for example were Tsavo-Lions, a breed of lions that have no manes at all. Going for the neck when attacking is also definitely lion-like hunting behavior. Btw the story of the Tsavo Man-Eaters is also history that deserves to be remembered :)
The story of the Tsavo Maneaters was popularized in The Ghost and The Darkness. I can’t remember the guy’s name now, Jim something, but he had written a book based on a series of encounters as a professional hunter, of man eating tigers in different parts of India. To his great credit he writes with a lot of objectivity, neither promoting himself nor vilifying the animals.
In fact it's a great movie. It's got real history interwoven with fiction. It has politics, religion and kung fu tossed together lightly with action, romance, fantasy and horror. It reminds me of The Matrix. It is very well photographed and beautiful to watch The best French film since the Nouvelle Vague.
jeremy gibbins one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. some of the best fight scenes are in the extra content. it is my movie I put in to go to sleep to because of the music and the rainy/gloomy feel to it. plus ive seen it so many times I can close my eyes and still know what's happening. plus its around 3 hrs long.
hoosierhiver Not necessarily. Cats often kill by biting the head or back of the neck. If the prey is large then the will suffocate it by biting the throat. I saw a show on tigers who attack people in India. They usually grab the head or back of the neck.
Yes, that goes along with the idea that it was a tiger...but why would a tiger kill over and over and over and not always eat more than the intestinal area?
Sorry, but high school history has been reduced to rote memorization. History could be this interesting... a great drama full of scandals and interesting stories but that’s not what the schools want for our children.
history class in 1967 was a place for all the students to catch up on their sleep. The teacher handed out the lessons, tests and answers all on paper on a regular bases, only rule for the class was don't make any noise to disturb others. Everyone passed that class lol
@@sunnyjim1355 History is written by the winners of wars, facts be damned in many cases. Never the less, as I said History is taught as rote memorization of irrelevant dates... what was the date of the Battle of Bull Run vs Why was the Battle of Bull Run important? Guess which test is easier to grade.... and there's why history is dumbed down.
Jeez. That's scary. Reminds me of the squirrels occupying my attic. They're just as fierce, eat rat poison, and play with the trap cages by eating all the peanuts. They're EVIL.
jet li! When I'm out on a long distance bike-hike along Lake Erie, I like to take a rest stop inland where the old Crystal Beach Amusement Park was. That's about getting under some shade. There's a colony of big chipmunks I have to watch out for.
Adding to this theory, the fact that it would routinely decapitate its victims is very similar to how many species of cat, including our own cuddle-bugs with share our homes and beds with, decapitate their kills.
I like the Lion theory. The entire time you were describing the beast, despite the images you showed, the one thing that kept coming to mind was "Cougar". I don't know if they lived in Medieval Europe, or if they're a uniquely American animal (or if they could have been brought back to France from the Americas for study), but the description sounded to me more like a great cat.
There's a fossilized, extinct creature that resembles drawings exactly. Perhaps it was the last of its species. Perhaps it was related to the Siberian Tiger. One of the drawings portrays the beast with stripes and an overall appearance that looks like the Siberian Tiger.
I will address just one point. how do we know that all attacks credited to "the beast" were in fact the same creature and not other things blamed on "the beast"
We don't know that at all. In fact, there is a very good chance that normal wolf attacks were conflated with the attacks of the beast. Given the environment, it is quite possible that every attack, or even rumor, became part of the hysteria.
I remember a documentary about this. Their theory was that the Beast was a hyena, kept from a traveling menagerie. That the hero farmer had kept & trained the hyena. There was even a scene in the doc that showed the host walking the storage area of the French natural history museum until they came across preserved/taxidermied specimens of hyenas. I’ve forgotten how, but one was identified as the Beast.
Yeah... really the only thing it could have been is a manbearpig. I just don't understand why people don't believe in the manbearpig. I have had several encounters. The truth is out there.
The reason why it was unidentified is actually pretty ridiculous: the hunter who killed it took the beast to Paris to have it identified (and to gain some glory), but the corpse smelled so badly that everyone (the hunter, the scientists and even the king) agreed to just get rid of it.
Sorry but english videos about the subject often go way to far on the suppositions on what the beast was. There is really no reason so suspect the beast is a supernatural being, a lion or a hyena, why ? Simply because we have the autopsy report of the beast that was killed by chastel, (the autopsie paper was found by a historian in 1958) The beast was recognized by survivors before the autopsy and the report clearly describes the beast as a canidae. The autopsy describes it as looking like a wolf at the back legs and tail area but like a weird looking wolf/dog at the front part of the body with a huge head, long nose with a flat nose tip, red eyes, black stripe all across the spine, a fur the color of a deer on the body, and with a white heart shaped spot on the torso. Now was it a malformed wolf ? a dog wolf hibrid or a weird wild (or trained) dog ? We can not know but the autopsie is clear : it's a canidae.
@@kiq4767 nope, hyenas have a different number of teeth, the beast had the same dental profil as a wolf/dog. The autopsy and the survivors clearly describe an animal that looks lika a weird wolf or a dog. Actually some people made a life size reconstruction of the beast with a statue based on the description and the measurments of the autopsy : www.google.com/search?q=bete+du+gevaudan+reconstitution&sca_esv=0760d5e5572d06eb&sca_upv=1&rlz=1C1ONGR_frFR946FR946&udm=2&biw=1920&bih=911&sxsrf=ACQVn0-6X6KlmmlwAENfDGxGb1l33WMbRw%3A1714142008113&ei=OLsrZunFBr-vkdUP2vK-gAE&oq=bete+du+gevaudan+rec&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAaAhgDIhRiZXRlIGR1IGdldmF1ZGFuIHJlYyoCCAAyCBAAGIAEGIsDSOIQUIwEWIIHcAF4AJABAJgBQ6ABxAGqAQEzuAEByAEA-AEBmAIEoALRAcICDRAAGIAEGEMYigUYiwPCAgkQABgIGIsDGB7CAgkQABgFGIsDGB6YAwCIBgGSBwE0oAfMBQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Ive looked at this story for years. A very real fear grips my soul reading the eye witness accounts as well as a pity for the people killed. Cant imagine the fear that they felt when face to face with the beast. Nothing else can trigger this fear in me as this historical account is able to. I also appreciate your knowledge added to the story .
My guess would be a pet hyena probably not as well known as lions watching your video and seeing some of the pictures that would be what I would have thought it was
A similar theory I heard was that the beast was a Hyena or possibly two, escaped from a menagerie. Aside from attacking with front claws, the description fits pretty well.
The Beast was actually a genetic hybrid we made of a wolf and bear that the secret company I work for sent back in time to that area because we thought it would be funny....and it was. Now you ever wonder what really happened to the Aztecs? Now that's a fascinating story. Let's say it involves a mix of DNA from a Mammoth, Racoon, a Kangaroo, DNA from Grumpy Cat and one of those square carpet samples that accidentally fell in. We were looking into getting new carpet put in. Oh and a old boot, that was my bad.
Another well written and produced video, sir! I especially liked the Conclusion section; you brought a lot of well-grounded observations and rationales into it.
@@shanasimpson2785 That does seems highly unlikely. An individual African mammal way out of its natural habitat, and having a rare tail deformation at the same time?
Why did I watch this ? I just went outside after midnight and got cold chills expecting The Beast to attack me. Scary stuff, History Guy.
Why are you telling me this. Now I will be scared to go out at night alone
Mike: "Hey Bill. You locked the lion's cage, right?"
Bill: "Ummm..."
Mike: "R-Right!"
My Son is planning on taking a history degree course in the near future, after leaving the British Military he has become disenchanted with his current job in I.T, and following my love of history programmes that we used to watch when he was growing up, programmes similar to yours (on television, no internet or UA-cam then), it just goes to show that History is not a dying interest or career, he hopes to go on and teach history, I am behind him 100%, if I was younger and in better health I would join him at university.
Whilst the subject of this video is not my cup of tea I applaud your enthusiasm and knowledge. 👍
I really enjoyed your impact segment of your video. That part is usually my favorite part so that I can apply the lessons of history to today. Fantastic job!
I find the Beast of Gevaudan to be a fascinating story and I've studied this one for a very long time. I have still not figured out what it was, and the best anyone can do is a guess. I believe that is what is so intriguing about the story. The best guess I can give would be (Maybe Spanish) War Dog. The Spanish mastiff had a weight of 270 pounds and stood 3 and a half to 4 feet tall, or at least the stories tell of this size. Ever seen the size of an English Mastiff? Celtic warriors used them, and they were larger than men. On Colombus 2nd trip he took to battle the natives with 20 Mastiff and a couple hundred conquistadors against thousands of natives. It is said that the sheer terror from just 20 dog's ripping men apart was what won them the battle. (I'm sure the black power rifles were a Boone also) Colombus said that ONE of the dogs was worth 15 of the soldiers and their bite was so powerful they could rip an arm from a man and crush a skull inside their massive jaw's. Those dogs were bread and trained for war, just imagine something so powerful, trained and smart in the countryside and the people have only been around average size dogs. The giant mastiff would have had rust colored fur, a black stripe down it's back, a bushy tail and if you look at the mouth it does look like a pig snout. No claws though.
Well, that's no ordinary beast! That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered beast you ever set eyes on!
Actually, my guess is a lioness, not a "juvenile male lion." No mane, and the lionesses are the hunters. They go for the throat.
Male lions do hunt aswell especially when they're solitary
There is a breed of lions as well where the males don't have manes. The Ghost and the Darkness were of that breed.
Lions dont have long snouts like a wolf, though. Wasnt a wolf though, either. Cant be a hyena with that tail, either. 🤔
Maybe some kind of hybrid animal bornin the wild... Like a hyena/wolf hybrid. ...maybe. Thad be my best guess.
Well played "Holy Grail" reference dude..
@@sagesheahan6732 Hyena/Wolf hybrid is impossible as the genes aren't close enough to allow fertilizartion to occur. In my opinion, as someone who has studied prehistoric beasts, I enjoy taking a look at two very similarly described animals. Hyeanodon gigas and Amphicyon ingens. They described them both as wolf like with long tails, very broad and muscular, and larger then the grey wolf by a long shot. Maybe the beast never ran into humans, so thought of them as an easy killing source of food. Not to add a lot of the depictions give the beast slightly shorter legs making me think it even more as a lot of primitive mammals had slightly smaller legs, even Direwolves did. However Direwolves lived in NA and SA, not EU.
I've read about this story over the years, and it has a reputation as the greatest real-life werewolf incident of all time. And yet, the descriptions of the beast and its behavior all say "feline, feline" to me. I think History Guy has it right when he notes that most people wouldn't have recognized a lion on sight. This is a time before photography when I suspect many artists who drew or painted lions had never actually seen one either, and some of their depictions were pretty far off the mark.
except the auopsy report on Chastel's kill concludes without a doubt that it was a canid. And contrary to popular believe peasants knew what a lion looks like, not all but most of them did. The lion was and still is an extremely present symbol in Europe: in heraldry, in religious art etc. You got to have someone who saw the beast that went “Hey that’s a lion!” at some point, but no one did. There even were people send from Versailles at some point, that had certainly seen realistic artistic depictions of lions or even actual lions in the royal menagerie. There are far more concrete evidences pointing toward one or several canids (wolf, dog, hybrid etc) than a lion in the end
@@martynaozog8060 What the "autopsy" reported is hardly of any relevance, when you can't even be sure they got the right animal in the first place.
And he's 100% right when he says that every detail offered about how the beast allegedly moved and attacked matches a large feline to a T, while it hardly fits the idea of one or more canids.
@@martynaozog8060 Wouldn't the people be more knowledgeable about what a dog or wolf looks like? If it really was just a wolf, you'd think people would say "There's a large wolf that's killing people!" My first suspicion would be that the animal was not native to the region and people were not familiar with it.
@@martynaozog8060 that's male lions with that long mane. I never seen lions drawing, statue etc without the long mane in Europe. If it's a wolf they would say it's a large wolf. Wolf or dogs is way too common in Europe. It must be something they never seen in Europe.
This video says it had long red fur and a black stripe down its back.. doesn't sound like a lion to me. ua-cam.com/video/1fyTL50hQKM/v-deo.html
Where was this channel hiding! So glad I came across this. Let the binge resume!
Sounds exactly like the description of Dogman, which is becoming very very popular with sightings all over the world these days
Historically speaking, wolf attacks seem to occur at times of famine and economic collapse, and environmental stress. That would be consisted with the circumstances surrounding these attacks. The fact that children were targeted is also consistent with wolf attacks. The frequency of the attacks suggests to me that multiple wolves were involved.
Thank you for truly keeping history alive!
When you search for the new Powerwolf song and find your favourite history channel
Same
This is incredible information because my wife and myself have been trying to find an explanation of what we encoutered on November 20, 2011. North Pennsylvania. Big, Big, eyes!
Incredibly long claws shaped like eagle talens but huge 10" long or so. Ears on top of its head appeared to be bat like. Black not reflectable in light. It jumped probably 60 feet.
Now I'm freaked out!
I see the truth is harder to believe than fiction.
No hyena theory? I heard a theory it was a hyena that escaped a menagerie. It would explain the ears and the neck in the description and hyenas do attack people
Yeah female hyenas are huge
The hyena theory matches poorly with the attack patters described, while the large feline theory matches almost too perfectly.
It was a hyena. It was killed, stuffed, mounted and is stored in some French museum basement. I saw a special on TV about this
david Bruce first, you may have seen a TV special but nothing assures all it told was true.
Second, something was killed and stuffed but there’s no modern evidence of what it was nor any guarantee it was “THE Beast”.
Third, very little about how Beast was described seems to match with a hyena. Hyenas don’t have long fangs, don’t have long claws, don’t move in quick large jumps and don’t ambush their preys aiming for the throat and head. Only big felines do.
david Bruce also, if you’ll watch the video on this very same channel about other notorious “maneater” beasts in history, you’ll notice an impressive amount of similarities with this story... and they were all big felines.
History Guy, I KNOW that tune you got playing in the background, meaning, I've heard it before. Who is it? I've tried to find it, but with no lyrics, I have nothing to go on but a video ... and still nothing to go on. Good stuff HG, keep`em comin.
"Even a man who is pure of heart, and says his prayers by night maybe become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms, and the moon is shining bright..."
I wonder if the people kept a close eye on the first victim that survived with scratches around the full moon to be sure she didn't change into one.
There is that prehistoric extinct wolf-like animal that fits the description to a tee. I can't remember the name, but it begins with a 'h'. It's possible that some animals still lived in those times back then, and maybe not all of them went extinct.
There are some well-founded comments on this informative video. I hope I can explain a few aspects clearly even though I am not a native speaker of English.
1) The assumption that a human killer, with or without a trained carnivore, had killed humans in Gévaudan, is based on novels from the 19th and 20th centuries. The French officials who investigated the attacks in the 1760s were no less intelligent than we are today: no official, no hunter, no surviving victim reported any evidence that a human could have been involved as an attacker. The texts handed down from the 18th century about the attacks contain several hundred thousand words. If you pick out individual words or sentences from this enormous volume of texts without regarding the context you can support any explanation, including the activity of a human killer. But this is not the way to get close to historical reality.
2) Several commentors point to an alleged hyena in Gévaudan. The decisive aspect in narrowing down the range of species in question is the reported behavior of the Beast. This behavior has been comprehensively documented: it excludes all carnivore families with one exception: Felidae, the cat family. Just one example among very many is that the Beast attacked horses by jumping on their back. This is the typical behavior of a big cat to bring down big ungulates. The location and exact dimensions of the injuries the Beast inflicted on one of these horses were documented. Reports that the beast behaved "like a cat", as well as the lion hypothesis date back to Gévaudan times: the Comte de Morangiès and the dragoon officer Duhamel referred to this species. Lions can survive European winters: up to historic times they lived in habitats with cold winters and snow cover.
3) It is logically impossible that the carnivore shot by Chastel in June 1767 was the Beast. The authors of the so-called Marin report claimed that the animal only partially resembled a wolf. But in their very detailed text they described a normal wolf (I have summarized this in one of my articles on ResearchGate: DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10323.35360). This wolf was possibly killed at a time when the Beast was already dead. It is not surprising that the Beast’s carcass was never found: large parts of Gévaudan were inaccessible to man; carnivores had endless potential hiding places. Chastel’s wolf was one of about half a dozen wolves which were arbitrarily selected and presented as “the Beast”.
In my opinion it sounds more like a leopard than a lion. Lions in the wild will typically leave their kills where they kill them and eat them on the spot. Nothing's gonna come up and steal food from a lion, so there's no reason to drag it off. Leopards are typically solitary ambush hunters, and it's very common for them to drag their prey off. In the wild they even pull them up trees, it's ridiculous. A black leopard would've looked like a nightmarish monster to someone who'd never even heard of one, in a place with no big cats. Canines are a lot more likely to go for an appendage like an arm or a leg than right for the throat, because it's a lot harder to reach for less agile canines, especially wolves. They'd want to grab your leg from behind, like they do on their natural prey. That's not to say a canine wouldn't rip your throat out if they got the chance, but it also seems likely that people would've noticed a wolf instantly, even a large wolf. Just speculation, but sounds a lot more like a leopard to me than anything else.
Your conclusion demonstrates how little, things have changed.
There was a documentary a few years back, saw it once and have never seen it again however it’s conclusion was this: the beast was most likely a trained, escaped Hyena from a collector , this animal fits the discretions and would be less known to your average person. While the attacks occurred the local clergy made bank telling the locals it was a plague from god. After time passed, the “trainer” said the he prayed to god, knelt in the forest and the beast walked up to him. He was the able to shoot it with the silver bullet he had made. So basilisks trained animal walked up to him and he shot it. He was in league with the local church and both damaged the villagers for prophet and control.
I watched this presentation once and long before I’d seen half of it had calculated for a lion. At the end you submitted it may have been a juvenile lion. I thought that an interesting hypothesis. Then you began discounting the theory of lions. Before you’d finished that thought line, I’d come up with another theory. Adult male lions of Tsavo are maneless an-nd coincidentally they are known man eaters...an-nd they are abnormally larger than savanna/maned lions. A Tsavo (pronounced Sãvō) lion would tick off quite a number of “yes” boxes. In fact they might tick off points that you may not be aware of. Tsavo lions are notably lighter and possible spots are much less obvious. If you like my theories - let me know.
This is brilliant!
That's my favorite theory also. The man-eaters of Tsavo were terrifying and killed adult men.
Very interesting to look at this from a historic point of view
This guy is the bomb... Respect
Who came here after the new Powerwolf song?
Your videos are excellent.
Love the hats.
I watched a documentary that hypothesized the same exact lion theory but it suggested a hyena that had escaped. Close enough to a wolf but larger and a harder to identify animal for a peasant at the time
we have large lions in the congo.. id lean towards that.. ligers and tigons hybrids grow to 1000 pounds
someone brought a cute kitten back from afrikka or asia and it got out of control
It remain strange based on the climate of the era
Either hes savage, and its just impossible he survive any french winter ( especially on gevaudan region )
Or hes tamed, and someone take care of the beast
Im not a big cat specialist, but we could suppose than -20c is far too cold for theim i guess
Try getting them to mate in the wild.
Its impossible lol.
except the auopsy report on Chastel's kill concludes without equivoke to a canid
I was thinking it could be a hybrid too but forgot just how big they get.
I always wondered if this story was an exotic animal imported for some circus or menagerie that got turned loose. Either a large cat, which fits with the claws, ears and tail. Or an American Grizzly Bear. Which fits with the shear scale and ability to shrug off musket shots.
Was waiting for a mention of the movie “brotherhood of the wolf”.
The lion is possible,due to the fact that lions,where found far north as Greece,and in parts of Russia. There’s even a story ( unknown if is true,but maybe possible ) that lions ,and or tigers,where once found as far north as Finland.but it has never been proven.
This is an interesting story!
45 seconds in and I'm checking for a April 1st posting date. lol
The movie, Brotherhood if the Wolf has a take on this story. If you haven’t watched it, you might give it a look-see.
This was clearly a rogue Dogman.
Wow, this sounds just like that movie Brotherhood of the Wolf. I’m wondering if this is where they got the idea for it. I think the movie is even French with English subtitles.
I saw A History Channel episode on Werewolves that stated it possibly could have been an escaped Hyena that the Nobles kept as exotic pets or zoos in France.
Aremor that is similar to the lion theory. I am dubious, though, as the pattern of the attacks was not consistent with hyena behavior. And hyenas have short, bushy tails. But it is quite possible that it was an exotic animal imported for a menagerie.
The hyena theory stays the most popular animal in the ‘the beast of Gévaudan was an exotic animal’ theory which is not among the most popular theories. The most popular theories include a wolf or a wolf pack gone wrong and man-eating (though that’s debatable because there’s a lot of incoherency with the wolf theory in general and a lot of people who worked on this case for years are certain it could not have been a wolf). And a hybrid between a wolf and a dog, it works with the autopsy report of Chastel’s kill (which concludes without equivoke to a canid without identifying a wolf which the man practicing it would have been able to do considering the huge presence of wolves in Auvergne/Gévaudan at the time)
I heard that after it was killed it was stuffed and mounted in Louis the 15th private muse and it was destroyed a few years later
My theory is that it was a local & somehow isolated small population, (waning, with only a handful of members left), localized species of the very, very last Dire Wolfs. Dire Wolfs were 50-100% larger than the modern wolf. Without DNA, this or any other theory cannot be proven. Hopefully at some point in the future, pre-fossilized remains may be found in a preserved enough state, and will close this case.
This guy sounds so much like actor Wallace Shawn
Skinwalker ranch !!!!
Witcher's work
The theories I've read about on this generally conclude it was a hyena probably imported for someone's personal menagerie. Then either escaping or periodically being allowed to roam free.
Siberian Tiger is a possibility as well, rarely there are the whites which the stripes sometimes show up as spots and tigers are much more prone than lions to be man-eaters.
Thank you
I think it was a hyena or jackal. It was displayed for a few years after being killed. Taxidermy wasn't as good 200+ years ago as it is today. The evidence points to an imported and possibly trained and/or escaped hyena or jackal. I may be wrong, but many nobles imported animals from other countries.
I predicted his third theory before he even explained it, almost every word. Including the fact that they may have heard about lions, and saw drawings of them, but would have no idea of what a lion actually looked like. And that's if they had even heard of lions. People back then are no different than now, they didn't have much of an interest in knowing things, at least beyond their own bubbles.
Excellent
It sounds like a lion based on how it kills. Reminds me of the lions of Tsavo.
I've heard that it may have been a hyena rather than wolves or a big cat. Too bad history doesn't include more forensic evidence.
Have you noticed when you look at the Ishtar Gate from Babylon that it has dragons and lions? Notice European coats of arms feature the dragon not the lion. Why would European heraldry feature an African beast they never saw? Or this story?
Sounds like a giant greyhound on PCP.
The thing being left out is quite a few of the beasts’ victims were sexually assaulted, as I understand it. I’m going for the trained animal and the serial killer farmer. Heat is on, he shoots his accomplice, gets to be a hero, murders stop.
Exageration,hysteria can account for much.
But that undeniable grain of truth seems to be there.
I mean, a lot of people actually died, so yes, I guess a "grain" of truth was there.
it certainly does sound like a big cat in the way it ambushes and grabs the back of the head and neck. carries its kill away.
I think the movie "brotherhood of the wolf or wolves" is loosely based on this.
Yay silver play button
I see things haven't changed much since the 18th Century, in a way.
There are still wealthy eccentric people that still buy exotic animals, thinking they can be pets and it is a very dangerous assumption. These animals are cute when they are young and to a certain extent are trainable because they are dependent on the human raising them. That is until the animal grows up and is no longer controllable by humans and it realizes that they are stronger and or higher on the food chain than a human. There was a terrible example of this back in 2009 were a couple had raised a chimp. When the chimp was a large adult, something set it off when a friend came over to visit and attacked her. The chimp, bit off all her fingers, blinded her and mauled her face. The chimp was shot by police and killed. This is only one example and more and more people are trying to buy exotic animals and it is not just the wealthy. Thing is, most of these animals are released when they get to large for the person to handle them and that turns in to an environmental disaster. Many of these animals (this includes reptiles, fish, birds and others) have no natural predators to keep them in check.
Florida, is now overrun by exotic snakes like pythons and boas. Those snakes got to large for there handler and they let them go in the wild where the conditions are similar to there habitat and reproduce. That is not the only problem there, some of these snakes are breading with other local snakes and creating hybrid snakes. Recently a collection of snakes species in an area of Florida, showed the genetic signature of the Indian rock python present in at least 13 snakes. That species is smaller, faster and arguably more aggressive than its big cousin, and thrives on higher and drier ground. Burmese pythons are more at home in the water. Even when they are kept in lab environments, some of these animals, some extremely dangerous and poisonous. This happened during hurricane Katrina when a bunch of snakes, like the Black Mamba used to create anti-venom escaped.
It is bad enough that we have our own species of dangerous animals here in the US, we do not need to import more because of some peoples twisted love affair with exotics that they wind up finding that they can not handle or due to their carelessness, the animals escape. Due to these people, there is a large black market out there that is more than happy to capture and sell these creatures illegally. Not just here but all over the world. Some people are just stupid and can't understand why wild animals can not become pets.
"Instead of a mouth, it's got four arses!"
Ancestor of modern cattle? I’ve forgotten the name.
Those people were idiots if they couldn't recognize a large cat, even if they couldn't identify it as a lion.
Ahh speculation and conjecture.
Specujection?
This guy's channel deserves to be remembered.
Well said, thanks man!
But remembered and seen by as many as possible.. and then remembered and seen by as many as possible.. and then... 😋
For the sake of us all whenever we are.
Learn good honest and honestish stuff and take some time to learn about and also sometime appropriate later make some effort to remember those who came before you. Thank you.
I had a most unusual frightening adventure on a Mountain in Western Maryland ,during the holidays from school in December and January.my friends and I were camping next to a huge background a stone cliff.
Trying to fall asleep with out freezing my ass i saw a pair of glowing eyes on the ledge over our tent ,being bored and curious about this I wanted to see if they would move around up there So I shot my 30/30 towards it and then they jumped out and then up and I'm going nuts trying to wake up my friends.We were firing on the eyes as they moved ,they went up as if in a tree . Trying to find out what it was ,we stopped shooting at the eyes ,we could not find them anywhere.At day light we carefully climbed up to find what we were shooting .We found some kind of paw prints in the muddy snow and ice the area was torn up,we found nothing more it stills bothers me when I am in the wood
You have THAT right.
@dick tracy Revelance to the story? Don't believe anyone has any interest in your bowel habits.
I carry a stick in case I shit out a wildcat...
Too bad older cave paintings were more anatomically accurate than the folks in the 15 16 and 1700s
Those where real humans, free hunters gatherers... Not peasents under unknown King leader and a murdering religion that where keeping them uneducated and feared demonising whatever they could not explain!!!
@@nicholaschristophorou3087 murdering religion? What are you even talking about.
@@nicholaschristophorou3087
How to dehumanise generations of people that lived in those times. "Real humans"....Wow. Those "free" hunter/gatherers lived a life where they were in constant contact with the animals they painted. They hunted them, and them carried them back to camp where they skinned, eviscerated and dressed them. Of course they knew what those animals looked like.
Lions hadn't lived in Europe for thousands of years if indeed that's what it was. The witnesses only had a few minutes to see and describe it and like the narrator said, most people would have been familiar, through pictures, of the long maned male lions and not even realised that females didn't have that mane.
You're so wrapped up in hate, you can't even make a comment about an anomalie of those times without bringing your own twisted vision of human history.
Many was burned ass witch speaking wrong
@Dr. M. H. Well, I can only think of one that has it as a tenet of their faith. The same one who's founder had sex with a 9 year old, bought and sold black slaves and had a man tortured for money. That's not "religion's" fault.
I wonder if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have been thinking about this when he wrote " The Hound of the Baskervilles".?
marbleman52 you are not the only one to have noticed the similarity. www.historytoday.com/crispin-andrews/sherlock-holmes-and-beast-gevaudan
Conan Doyle's tale was mainly inspired by a Herefordshire Marcher Country legend about 'Black Vaughan', the wicked nobleman of Hergest who terrorised the neighbourhood after his death. But given Doyle's interest in occult law and his other wide ranging interests, who's to say that he didn't know about the Gevaudan incident?
Private menageries go back a long, long way with English (and doubtless other European) nobility. One medieval king had a big collection at the Tower of London and, way back in the 1100's there was one at Chillington, near Wolverhampton. One day a panther escaped, and was killed just as it prepared to pounce on a woman and her child. So, yes, the idea THG puts forward has a definite ring of plausibility to it.
Love the series. Does THG read the posts?
marbleman52: It makes you wonder how he had time between chasing ficticious Fairies.
marbleman52 Good question.
I loved his movies of Sherlock Holmes. I use To read all the time, but I'm older now and can't see the words much.
It pisses me off so much when people try to disregard hundreds of witness reports as “simply exaggerated hysteria”- like, orrrr maybe you weren’t there and have zero reason to believe they were mistaken other than the fact that you don’t like not having a clean and straightforward answer?
Me too. This is one of the well-documented stories. He knows that but still chooses to call it a superstition
I agree with you both. Some scientists and sceptics are far too sceptical.
I'm French and I can tell you this story of the Bête du Gévaudan is still well remembered. Thanks for this video and your always interesting channel!
I can confirm that ! and also that summarising the story in less than 10 minutes is a hell of a feat that deserves to be remembered ;-)
For those interested in details of the story, French readers can turn to François Fabre's "La Bête du Gévaudan" éditions De Borée - Terre de poche
This story also established the idea that werewolves are vulnerable to silver, but it didn't take until 1941's movie The Wolf Man.
Why noone knows what was the beast if it was shot
Could this beast be a dire wolf 🐺?
The story reminds me of the Tsavo Lions - “The Ghost” and “The Darkness”, killing all of those railroad workers 120 years ago.
I may do an episode on those lions some day.
Yes, please!
please do. the only people who seem to know of this are those who have seen the movie or been to the museum in Chicago.
Mark Welschmeyer ua-cam.com/video/Rb-DSFoh7zk/v-deo.html
The movie you're looking for is _Brotherhood of the Wolf_
When you listed the described characteristics of the beast my first idea was: "That sounds exactly like a lion". What many people don't know is that there are lions that simply have no manes. The Tsavo Man-Eaters for example were Tsavo-Lions, a breed of lions that have no manes at all.
Going for the neck when attacking is also definitely lion-like hunting behavior.
Btw the story of the Tsavo Man-Eaters is also history that deserves to be remembered :)
Yea,also the long jumpes it said, the tail and the neck all my first idea was a lion as well
It seems rather evident that it is a large cat of some sort
The story of the Tsavo Maneaters was popularized in The Ghost and The Darkness.
I can’t remember the guy’s name now, Jim something, but he had written a book based on a series of encounters as a professional hunter, of man eating tigers in different parts of India. To his great credit he writes with a lot of objectivity, neither promoting himself nor vilifying the animals.
I also thought of Hyena as well but the tail points to a large cat too
@@scotttudor6647The only issue is that the autopsy of the beast showed it had 42 teeth. Lions only have 30. Everything else fits.
They did a movie based on this called "The Brotherhood Of The Wolf" not a bad movie.
In french its called le pacte des loups
In fact it's a great movie. It's got real history interwoven with fiction. It has politics, religion and kung fu tossed together lightly with action, romance, fantasy and horror. It reminds me of The Matrix.
It is very well photographed and beautiful to watch The best French film since the Nouvelle Vague.
jeremy gibbins one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time. some of the best fight scenes are in the extra content. it is my movie I put in to go to sleep to because of the music and the rainy/gloomy feel to it. plus ive seen it so many times I can close my eyes and still know what's happening. plus its around 3 hrs long.
yes! have the dvd great movie!
I loved that film!
I've also heard a theory that the beast was a large spotted hyena instead of a lion
I believe that's what it is too
Thats true they said it had a laugh like cry and a massive head sounds like hyena
Interesting. Possibly.
Hyena isn't that huge though and a large male probably can put up a fight. I think it's something else.
@@icyboy771z maybe the lack of rivals allowed the Hyena to eat and grow larger? Or Hyena hybrid?
History guy, you're awesome.
Tim Huber He is.
Attacking a person by the head sounds like a lion or tiger.
Most predators go for the throat
hoosierhiver Not necessarily. Cats often kill by biting the head or back of the neck. If the prey is large then the will suffocate it by biting the throat. I saw a show on tigers who attack people in India. They usually grab the head or back of the neck.
Yes, that goes along with the idea that it was a tiger...but why would a tiger kill over and over and over and not always eat more than the intestinal area?
Lori Boufford Because that's the most delicious part.
Hardscrabble Blake 1968 the Romans had records of all these animals hundreds of years before this. they would have known...
Sounds like my ex wife.
It’s funny how they are so sweet at first and then........ Hell begins
Sounds more like a cougar attack lol.
@@painmagnet1 shit i wouldn't mind being attacked by cougar lol
You shot your wife ?
@Mark Pullar You never forget the night you bagged your first cougar!
I wish you were my history teacher back in high school!👍😁
Sorry, but high school history has been reduced to rote memorization. History could be this interesting... a great drama full of scandals and interesting stories but that’s not what the schools want for our children.
history class in 1967 was a place for all the students to catch up on their sleep. The teacher handed out the lessons, tests and answers all on paper on a regular bases, only rule for the class was don't make any noise to disturb others. Everyone passed that class lol
@@@ai4px That's because high school history is, and should be, focused on known facts, not some folk stories.
@@sunnyjim1355 History is written by the winners of wars, facts be damned in many cases. Never the less, as I said History is taught as rote memorization of irrelevant dates... what was the date of the Battle of Bull Run vs Why was the Battle of Bull Run important? Guess which test is easier to grade.... and there's why history is dumbed down.
I had a history teacher in grade 9. Like him ! Got me into exploring our past ! Thanks Mr Winters !
Ah, women as eyewitnesses... "Cop: What car was it Mam?". "Mam: A white one".
Jeez. That's scary. Reminds me of the squirrels occupying my attic. They're just as fierce, eat rat poison, and play with the trap cages by eating all the peanuts. They're EVIL.
Animals can't be evil.
That's a human trait.
Well, maybe not EVIL. But VICIOUS!
100 people dead, not quite, but still humorous
The only way to win is to burn your house down!
jet li! When I'm out on a long distance bike-hike along Lake Erie, I like to take a rest stop inland
where the old Crystal Beach Amusement Park was. That's about getting under some shade.
There's a colony of big chipmunks I have to watch out for.
The lion theory makes the most sense.
Adding to this theory, the fact that it would routinely decapitate its victims is very similar to how many species of cat, including our own cuddle-bugs with share our homes and beds with, decapitate their kills.
A Leopard absolutely wild...
Wild Cat absolutely Wild.
except the auopsy report on Chastel's kill concludes without a doubt that is was a canid
@@martynaozog8060 and cats use their hind legs to disembowel during an attack
Spread the word! History Guy deserves a lot more than 12K subscribers.
Thank you!
8 mo later...183k subs! Nice, that's quite a jump (and one of those 'hope for humanity' feelings)
@@JH-ji6cj 212k 2 more weeks later, seems like the start was slow, but once it starts rolling...
234K 2 weeks later.
May 2019 358K. Still should be more. Best Channel on You Tube.
I like the Lion theory. The entire time you were describing the beast, despite the images you showed, the one thing that kept coming to mind was "Cougar". I don't know if they lived in Medieval Europe, or if they're a uniquely American animal (or if they could have been brought back to France from the Americas for study), but the description sounded to me more like a great cat.
Popular theories are that it was a lion or hyena (possibly an escaped exotic animal)
There's a fossilized, extinct creature that resembles drawings exactly. Perhaps it was the last of its species. Perhaps it was related to the Siberian Tiger. One of the drawings portrays the beast with stripes and an overall appearance that looks like the Siberian Tiger.
Somebody call Agent Mulder quick! It'd be the oldest X-file yet...
I will address just one point. how do we know that all attacks credited to "the beast" were in fact the same creature and not other things blamed on "the beast"
We don't know that at all. In fact, there is a very good chance that normal wolf attacks were conflated with the attacks of the beast. Given the environment, it is quite possible that every attack, or even rumor, became part of the hysteria.
It was Dogman. Look into it.
from what I've read it seems several private murders were done in a way to put the blame on the monster.
I remember a documentary about this. Their theory was that the Beast was a hyena, kept from a traveling menagerie. That the hero farmer had kept & trained the hyena. There was even a scene in the doc that showed the host walking the storage area of the French natural history museum until they came across preserved/taxidermied specimens of hyenas. I’ve forgotten how, but one was identified as the Beast.
It sounds at first similar to Hound of the Bascervillles. And later it sounds like The Ghost and the Darkness.
I personally thunk it was a manbearpig... it fits perfectly the attack tactics of a prepubescent manbearpig
Don't be ridiculous, everybody knows the manbearpig is a myth.
Excelsior!
Are you cereal?
Yeah... really the only thing it could have been is a manbearpig. I just don't understand why people don't believe in the manbearpig. I have had several encounters. The truth is out there.
Didn't manbearpig star in the movie "Mitchell"?
This story has fascinated me since childhood especially because they actually caught the beast and yet it still remains unidentified
Cuz it wasn't the real beast
The reason why it was unidentified is actually pretty ridiculous: the hunter who killed it took the beast to Paris to have it identified (and to gain some glory), but the corpse smelled so badly that everyone (the hunter, the scientists and even the king) agreed to just get rid of it.
Sorry but english videos about the subject often go way to far on the suppositions on what the beast was. There is really no reason so suspect the beast is a supernatural being, a lion or a hyena, why ? Simply because we have the autopsy report of the beast that was killed by chastel, (the autopsie paper was found by a historian in 1958) The beast was recognized by survivors before the autopsy and the report clearly describes the beast as a canidae. The autopsy describes it as looking like a wolf at the back legs and tail area but like a weird looking wolf/dog at the front part of the body with a huge head, long nose with a flat nose tip, red eyes, black stripe all across the spine, a fur the color of a deer on the body, and with a white heart shaped spot on the torso. Now was it a malformed wolf ? a dog wolf hibrid or a weird wild (or trained) dog ? We can not know but the autopsie is clear : it's a canidae.
@@guillaumechacun9049maybe hyena?
@@kiq4767 nope, hyenas have a different number of teeth, the beast had the same dental profil as a wolf/dog. The autopsy and the survivors clearly describe an animal that looks lika a weird wolf or a dog.
Actually some people made a life size reconstruction of the beast with a statue based on the description and the measurments of the autopsy : www.google.com/search?q=bete+du+gevaudan+reconstitution&sca_esv=0760d5e5572d06eb&sca_upv=1&rlz=1C1ONGR_frFR946FR946&udm=2&biw=1920&bih=911&sxsrf=ACQVn0-6X6KlmmlwAENfDGxGb1l33WMbRw%3A1714142008113&ei=OLsrZunFBr-vkdUP2vK-gAE&oq=bete+du+gevaudan+rec&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAaAhgDIhRiZXRlIGR1IGdldmF1ZGFuIHJlYyoCCAAyCBAAGIAEGIsDSOIQUIwEWIIHcAF4AJABAJgBQ6ABxAGqAQEzuAEByAEA-AEBmAIEoALRAcICDRAAGIAEGEMYigUYiwPCAgkQABgIGIsDGB7CAgkQABgFGIsDGB6YAwCIBgGSBwE0oAfMBQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Ive looked at this story for years. A very real fear grips my soul reading the eye witness accounts as well as a pity for the people killed. Cant imagine the fear that they felt when face to face with the beast. Nothing else can trigger this fear in me as this historical account is able to.
I also appreciate your knowledge added to the story .
Soviless99 oh I think if you saw a grizzly bear face to face it might surpass the feeling this gives.
I appreciate your sentiment. Not many people can connect with others outside of their own experiences.
My guess would be a pet hyena probably not as well known as lions watching your video and seeing some of the pictures that would be what I would have thought it was
A similar theory I heard was that the beast was a Hyena or possibly two, escaped from a menagerie. Aside from attacking with front claws, the description fits pretty well.
The Beast was actually a genetic hybrid we made of a wolf and bear that the secret company I work for sent back in time to that area because we thought it would be funny....and it was. Now you ever wonder what really happened to the Aztecs? Now that's a fascinating story. Let's say it involves a mix of DNA from a Mammoth, Racoon, a Kangaroo, DNA from Grumpy Cat and one of those square carpet samples that accidentally fell in. We were looking into getting new carpet put in. Oh and a old boot, that was my bad.
*_TO THE FATHER AND THE SON, CAME THE BEST OF GÉVAUDAN_*
TERMINATOR, A TRAITOR, HALF WOLF AND HALF MACHINE
Another well written and produced video, sir! I especially liked the Conclusion section; you brought a lot of well-grounded observations and rationales into it.
Cryptozoology and history. Awesome video.
Josh Geiger Yo JOSH
Dogman, yo!
Jordan Coggburn HoWl At ThE mOoN
I thought it could be the last cave hyaena (an animal we know was in the region during the last ice age).
Clearly it was a loup-garou.
I think so, too! Cryptids ARE out there. We don't know everything! 👹
Gentleman Jim except got the tail
Were wolf???
Fishfan 2 There Wolf.
@@fishfan2 they are called dogmen
This animal makes me think of an African or Asian big cat that had escaped a collector perhaps.
I remember reading a book about it and it was discovered it was a hyena that a noble had brought back.
Hyenas have very short tails.
@@JohnVanRaak-yx6cb maybe a deformed
@@shanasimpson2785 That does seems highly unlikely. An individual African mammal way out of its natural habitat, and having a rare tail deformation at the same time?
I believe it was a wolf or wolves, they can grow to be enormous in size and are just as cunning and clever as humans, if not more so!
With the description, my first thought was hyena....
“Lions don’t do this. Lions never did this.... “
The Ghost and the Darkness.
"ONE SHOT!"
It sounds like your describing Hillary Clinton......
You better sleep with one eye open. There are 40 some odd people whose last actions were crossing her.
2016 called, want's their joke back