The Bête de l'Auxerrois: the man-eating beast of Trucy-sur-Yonne

The Auxerrois is vineyard and forest country in Burgundy. Trucy-sur-Yonne lies about 20 km south of Auxerre, beside a wood. In November 1731 that wood became the starting point of a run of killings that would last three years. History remembers it as the Bête de l'Auxerrois.

A 12-year-old boy, named Jean in one account, was working with his mother near the wood. An animal came for him. In John Knifton's words, the mother "managed to snatch him back from the carnivorous animal which was trying to devour him, but he died in her arms as they made their way back home."

The attacks followed one after another. Young children were the main victims. In five months the priest of Val-de-Mercy recorded fourteen deaths from an attack by a carnivorous animal.

Then the beast entered Mailly-la-Ville. A young child was playing in front of the house. Six years old, according to one account. The animal carried the child off. The nurse tried to pull the child from its jaws. She was left holding only one foot. Other accounts say an arm.

At Coulanges-la-Vineuse, a wolf identified as having devoured several children got inside the walled village. Panic followed. The parish registers kept counting. At Fouronne in 1732, the priest wrote that Jeanne Bonnotte, aged about 13 years, "was devoured by a ferocious beast". Those who saw it called it wolf-like. Yet no account says it was an ordinary wolf. Its size was put at that of a large wolf. Or a tiger.

Louis XV offered a 200-livre bounty. From May to July 1732 the Louveterie du Roy, the royal wolf-hunting service, was stationed at Coulanges. Organised hunts went out. Many wolves were killed. Poisoned sheep carcasses were left in the fields.

The attacks went on. By the end of 1734 the death records listed 28 victims: 9 children, 9 women and 10 men. That year hunters killed two wolves. Soon after, the killings stopped. No source proves those two wolves were the killers.

About 80 years later, it happened again in the same forest. A child was devoured near Charentenay. Another at Fouronnes. Many people were injured. At Fontenay, a young man rescued a girl and described the attacker as "a large mastiff". Another witness spoke of a mastiff-type dog with upright ears. Poisoned sheep were laid near the woods. The animal disappeared. No carcass was ever found.

At the time, experts thought it was an ownerless wild animal, and probably not an ordinary wolf. Rumours spoke of werewolves and demons. Others suggested a tiger or a hyena. Knifton and La Pyramide du Loup both suggest several animals rather than one. Knifton also points to rabies, famine, wartime corpses and town-dwellers who knew little about real wolves.

Historians lean toward wolves. Jean-Marc Moriceau's Homme et loup project at the University of Caen lists the Bête de l'Auxerrois among its named man-eating wolf episodes. It is grouped with other ferocious beasts of the era, from Primarette to the Lyonnais. Léon Foin first studied the case in 1901 and called it a "Bête du Gévaudan" in the Auxerrois. More than three decades before Gévaudan, Burgundy had its own beast.