The Bête du Cézallier, the post-war beast of Auvergne

In 1946, the war was over, but meat was still rationed, and gendarmes sometimes seized unsold livestock. Farmers resented it. Wolves, officially, were gone from the Massif Central. Then, in September, something began to kill in the high pastures of the Cézallier and Sancy massifs. The first panic broke out near Issoire, in the Puy-de-Dôme, then spread to Bonneval, in the Haute-Loire, then to the herds on the high ground.

One of the earliest accounts came through an AFP dispatch. Farmers had seen a lion. After eating a few sheep, it had hidden in the woods of Boutaresse, a hamlet of Saint-Alyre-ès-Montagne. About fifty hunters gathered for a battue, an organised drive through the trees. They were led by a general, the military governor of Strasbourg. No kill was recorded.

On 1 February 1947, Léo Laurent, a local man, found the animal's tracks in the snow at Saint-Alyre. He followed them to the Roche de Grolet. There he fired on what he described as "un gros loup", a big wolf. It fled to its lair "au sommet du mont Cézalier", on the summit. A hunt was organised, but the animal escaped.

The killing went on. In September 1947 there were reports near Chastreix. In July 1948, sheep were eaten at La Volpilière. In 1949, cattle were lost at Chastreix and Latour-d'Auvergne. That September, animals "et leurs petits", with their young, were seen again at Saint-Alyre.

The descriptions never agreed. At Riom-ès-Montagnes, "un tigre aux pattes énormes", a tiger with enormous paws. At La Chaise-Dieu, "une panthère dévorant un renard", a panther eating a fox. Around Saugues, a bear. It took sheep, cattle and young animals, but never people.

In June 1947, farmers at Saint-Germain-du-Teil, in the Lozère, raised the alarm. Gendarmes shot a lioness that had escaped from a menagerie near Limoges. It looked like an answer. But she was found about 80 km from the Cézallier, and the reports kept coming.

The affair is said to have ended in 1951 at Grandrieu, in the Margeride, where a wolf was killed. One account calls it "officiellement, le dernier loup abattu en Lozère", officially the last wolf shot in Lozère. Even that title is disputed.

Léo Laurent's shot pointed to wolves. Some thought the Grandrieu animal was a wolf-dog gone feral. A darker rumour blamed former maquis fighters, killing sheep to stir up panic. No evidence for it has been found.

The sociologist Michel Meurger, who did fieldwork in the Cézallier in 1983, offered another reading. The kills were probably the work of wolves. But the panic fixed on the image of an exotic big cat, the lioness, and popular memory kept her. Rationing and post-war tension are said to have fed it. The matter was never clarified.

The chronicler Abbé Julien Lespinasse set the story down as "La Bête du Cézallier" in the Almanach de Brioude. Books on wolves by Gérard Ménatory and Jean-Marc Moriceau took it up. In 2010 the regional daily La Montagne set it beside an older legend, the Bête du Gévaudan. No photograph or film of the animal is known. Only the carcasses, and the tracks one man followed through the snow.