The Bête de Chaingy: a she-wolf in the forests west of Orléans (1814)

Wolves were nothing new around Chaingy, a commune about 12 km west of Orléans. In 1795 its records set bounties of 300 livres for a pregnant she-wolf, 250 for one that was not, 200 for a wolf and 100 for a cub "no bigger than a fox." In 1797 came a complaint that wolves were digging up corpses in the cemeteries of Chaingy and La Chapelle. The region also had its own monster. Attacks blamed on the Bête d'Orléans went back to the 1690s.

6 December 1814. Several women and children were gathering dead wood in the forest, between Chaingy and Huisseau-sur-Mauves. A she-wolf came at them. In the words of the town's own history, they "furent assaillis par une louve." When it was over, two were dead and eight wounded. By one account, the wounded were taken to the Hôtel-Dieu d'Orléans.

The survivors left almost nothing about the animal itself. One retelling calls it "une louve monstrueuse," a monstrous she-wolf. Another says simply a large one. No size, no colour, no sound. Only the attack.

The prefect ordered a battue. He was Alexandre-Daniel de Talleyrand-Périgord, baron de Talleyrand. Not the famous diplomat. One detailed account says he took part in person, beside louvetiers, forestry officers, General Colbert, colonel of the Royal Lancers, and many other senior officers.

It ended near Cercottes. A large she-wolf was killed. By that same telling, the final blow came not from the officers but from "un modeste bûcheron," a humble woodcutter. One stroke of his axe.

Fables and ballads about the beast of Chaingy followed. An image published by Rabier Boulard in Orléans was widely circulated. One print, titled "Figure de la bête féroce qui ravage les alentours d'Orléans," carries a handwritten note: "1820, dite bête de Chaingy."

Its scaled, armoured monster came from somewhere else. It belonged to the older Bête d'Orléans, whose hunters claimed bullets could not reach it. Printers copied each other's woodblocks. Slowly, the two beasts became one.

Jacques Baillon, writing in Nos derniers loups (1990), accepted that a wolf may have attacked the wood gatherers. But he strongly doubted the toll. Baillon's main argument is the parish register of Chaingy, which makes no mention of the supposed tragedy. No newspaper or archive report from 1814 has been located.

Some suggest the she-wolf was rabid, which could explain so many victims in a single attack. It remains a guess. Wikipedia and Netflix France call the Bête imaginary, grown from attacks "réelles ou supposées." As one blog put it, all the misdeeds were naturally blamed on the one animal.

The University of Caen project "Homme et loup" treats Chaingy as the end of the Loire valley wolf tragedies, and the beast is called a cousin of the Bête du Gévaudan. In 1868 the last wolf of the region was killed at Chaingy by Blaise Basset, a famous poacher. Its remains are said to rest in an Orléans museum. The she-wolf of 1814 left no such trace. Only a story, a few prints, and a silent register.