Margeride

Over the next three years, it would claim somewhere near a hundred lives and humiliate two of the most celebrated hunters in the kingdom, as well as embarrass a king.

The Gévaudan was a highland region in south central France, roughly matching the modern department of Lozère, folded into the granite ridges of the Margeride Mountains.

It was remote and the economy ran on rye, cattle, and sheep, and most families sent their children out to watch the herds, often alone and often a long walk from the nearest house.

Wolves were simply part of life there and parish registers across France show savage wolf attacks going back centuries.