“My Commander, I have the honor to inform you that on August 1st (Editor's note: from the year 1878) a wolf bit, in the commune of Saint-Goazec, an individual, Mr. Suignard, and three dogs belonging to Mr. de Kerjégu, mayor of the said commune, who had them killed and buried. . This letter from the Châteauneuf-du-Faou gendarmerie gives us valuable information on one of the last wolf attacks in Brittany.
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Attack of a man on the lock
We are on the edge of the Nantes-Brest canal. At the beginning of the afternoon, a wolf is seen near the lock of the Gwakerby a worker working on the spillway. “And there he is attacked by the wolf; he has an injury on his hand. The wolf disappears and it seems that he went back to Trévarez and left on the road which goes up towards Roudouallec, on the crest of the Montagnes Noires. He arrives in a small hamlet called Meilh ar C'hoad, Moulin du Bois in Breton, and enters the courtyard of a farm. There, dogs start to howl. Mr. Henry, the farmer, goes out of his farm and notices that there is a wolf, in any case a large canine, present. The animal runs away. Monsieur Henri takes his rifle. He manages to shoot the wolf from about 60 meters away. He kills him, it seems, instantly”says historian Nicolas Baron, specialist in animals and rabies.
In reality, at the end of the 19th century, there are no longer many wolves in Brittany, unlike the previous century. Only a few dozen individuals probably remain. How to explain this drastic decrease? In the space of a century, France – and Brittany in particular – has experienced very strong demographic growth, particularly in the countryside. “We also have an improvement in living conditions, the population is better fed; she will both grow, gain weight and size and therefore will perhaps be able to better physically resist the attacks of wolves”adds Nicolas Baron. Technical innovations are also multiplying, whether in the types of traps, guns, or even the poison used against wolves. In addition, the liberalization of hunting rights, which began during the French Revolution, accelerated at this time.
“Perhaps the last rabid wolf in Brittany”
The wolf is also the victim of a terrible disease, which can be transmitted to humans: rabies. This disease, which seemed to have largely disappeared in Brittany in the middle of the 19th century, returned in the 1870s. In the case of the Saint-Goazec attacks, a host of clues could lead us to believe that the wolf was sick. Indeed “this behavior is absolutely atypical for a normal wolf, especially at this time when the wolf has practically disappeared”deciphers the specialist. “And so this wolf, which is undoubtedly one of the last wolves in Brittany, there is no reason why he should have gone to attack a herd of cows. These prey are still a bit important for a wolf alone. That he attacks an adult man who is working in the middle of the canal and therefore who surely has tools, that also seems quite surprising. And for him to enter a farm and begin to approach, or even attack, guard dogs which, in my opinion, should not have been little animals either, that still remains very astonishing”. His conclusion is straightforward: “in my opinion, we are dealing with a rabid wolf and therefore perhaps the last rabid wolf in Brittany and one of the very last in France ».
L'Almanac is the podcast from Bretagne Culture Diversité, the association which facilitates everyone's access to Brittany and the diversity of its cultures. The program looks back on major dates in the history of Brittany in the company of historians and archives put to sound. A program to be found on Le Mur des Podcasts d’Ouest-France.
