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M. François Antoine, Officer of the Royal Bedchamber, Knight Equerry of the Royal Military Order of Saint Louis, served as Gun-Bearer to the King and Lieutenant of the Hunt under Louis XV of France, and is most notable as having pursued and slain the Beast of Gévaudan, its mate, and its whelps between 23 June and 17 October 1765. Antoine, by personal decree of the King, arrived in Malzieu on 23 June 1765 to replace the ineffective Norman father-son duo of Jean-Charles-Marc-Antoine Vaumesle d'Enneval and Jean-François, who had been at the hunt since March with little to show for their efforts but the skins of ordinary wolves. His hunting party consisted of eight gamekeepers from the Royal Captaincies of the Hunt, two mounted gamekeepers on loan from the Duke of Orléans, three aides of the Duke of Penthiévre, a servant of the Prince de Condé, two doghandlers, a valet, and Antoine's own son, de Beauterne, of the Gendarmerie Royale. With him Antoine brought four male wolfhounds and a female greyhound, all hand-picked from the Royal Pack. He intended to supplement this small group with hounds from d'Enneval's own pack, as the Norman had yet to receive the recall of the King, and experienced dogs from local packs that had fought with the Beast. Antoine first hunted with the d'Ennevals on 23 June, a Sunday, in the Malzieu area. Though the majority of the Gévaudanais were Catholic, thereby restricting them from strenuous activity on the Sabbath, Sunday hunts allowed the citizenry to depart from churches en-masse and move to the positions to which they had been assigned by local government officials, often as beaters. ==Background== The d'Ennevals themselves had on 17 February replaced ''capitaine-aide-major'' Duhamel and his fifty-seven dragoons as masters of the hunt in Gévaudan, but they were proving to be equally unsuccessful in the field. On 8 April Duhamel relocated to new quarters at Pont-Saint-Esprit with his mixed regiment, the Volunteers of Clermont, having been removed and reassigned by Clément Charles François de Laverdy, whose faith in the Duhamel placed him outside of the King's favour. Despite enjoying the reputation of a great wolf hunter in Normandy, d'Enneval having destroyed 1200 wolves during his career, the Beast remained at large. Moreover his surly demeanor towards the Gévaudanais and local government officials, including the Bishop of Mende, did not place him in a favorable position, no matter how much favour he had at the court of the King, where he was vouched for by the intendant of his province M. Lallemant de Levignen. Public confidence in the d'Ennevals collapsed on 24 May during the popular fair at Malzieu. The Beast made its first attack of the day at Julianges, critically wounding twenty-year-old Marguerite Martin, who received extreme unction by the roadside from the vicar of Saint-Privat. A mile from this episode, in Amourettes, a boy of eleven was seized, but the Beast was put to flight by neighbors coming to his aid. It then fell upon a boy and girl as they entered a copse, devouring thirteen-year-old Marie Valét even as her companion attempted to fight off the assailant. When the boy brought help from local villagers, they found only a headless corpse from which most of the flesh had been eaten. A huntsman of d'Enneval was sent to set an ambush at the corpse of Valét, but the Beast did not return. Instead, it arrived in Lorciéres and attacked Marguerite Boney, eighteen, by the village of Marcillac, emerging from its hiding place in a juniper thicket and rending her clothes until she was naked from the waist up. To her aid came sixteen-year-old Pierre Tanavelle, whose aunt had been slain by the Beast on 23 February. Wielding an improvised spear he wounded the Beast, and it fled. News of these depredations reached the marketplace at Malzieu even as the Beast went about its business, prompting many to pack up their wares and head home. Louis XV, upon hearing of the events of 24 May, became furious and informed his court that he intended to replace the d'Ennevals, who had fared no better than Duhamel before them, with Antoine. The Royal Gunbearer departed for the Gévaudan on 8 June. Antoine and the d'Ennevals cooperated in the field until 18 July, when de Laverdy assented to the orders of Étienne Lafont, syndic of the estates of the Gévaudan and subdelegate to the intendant of Languedoc, to remove the Normans and give Antoine complete control of the hunt. D'Enneval and son soon returned to Normandy after they were mocked for their futile efforts at the court of the King. A contemporary was noted as saying the d'Ennevals bore "shame tantamount to that of a fox who has been caught by a chicken." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Antoine de Beauterne」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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