Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 2 (2012), p. 323

In his Histoire du méchant loup (Fayard, 2007), Jean-Marc Moriceau investigated three thousand incidents of wolves attacking country-folk in France between the fifteenth and the twentieth centuries. In L’homme contre le loup, the professor of rural history at the University of Caen adopts a much wider time frame that extends back some two thousand years. He begins and ends by examining the drastic re-evaluation of the wolf that has taken place in recent years, from being seen as a threat to man and beast only fit for destruction, to being recognized as an endangered species to be protected. Having been eradicated from French territory during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wolves returned to France in the early 1990s, coming from northern Italy into the Mercantour area of the Southern Alps. For many centuries, hunters who killed wolves were rewarded but, following French ratification of various European directives on habitat conservation and biodiversity, such action now gives rise to penalties and the full force of law. Just as woodlands are to be conserved rather than cleared, marshlands cherished rather than drained, and heaths protected rather than reclaimed, so wolves must now be tolerated to live alongside mankind and grazing animals.

Fifteen chapters draw on a vast array of evidence to depict the threat posed by wolves at various stages in the past. Sheep and goats were especially vulnerable, but wolves would also attack deer, other large animals, and human beings. Young children or old folk who were entrusted with watching over flocks were most at risk, whilst adults performed more arduous forms of work close to the farmhouse. Moriceau shows how the distribution of wolves varied through time and across space, becoming more numerous when human vulnerability increased during periods of famine or disease, and occupying transitional environments of heaths and rough pastures, where human densities were low, rather than intensively cultivated farmlands with higher densities of settlement. Thus, wolves were relatively rare in the Ile-de-France, Normandy and the basin of Aquitaine, but were numerous in and around the Massif Central, the Vosges, Alps, and Pyrenees. Nonetheless, they also entered villages and towns, even venturing into the streets of Paris on occasion. Lighting fires, creating noise, employing effective guard dogs, putting grazing animals in pens at night, and praying long and hard were age-old measures to counter the threat. From the time of Charlemagne, an official body (La Louveterie) has existed to organize wolf hunts. With the passage of time, traps and poisons became more sophisticated but, of course, harmless grazing animals and careless humans could fall foul of them. The final phases in the story of the wolf hunt came during the nineteenth century, as financial rewards became more attractive and guns both more effective and widespread. The Association de Lieutenants de Louveterie still exists but its role has changed to controlling the proliferation of wild boar in many parts of France, and offering advice on the most ecologically sound ways of practising la chasse.

The new, protected status of wolves in France has created fury in sheep-rearing communities in the Alps and other ‘transitional environments’, and has attracted a great deal of media interest. Moriceau’s book adds a valuable historical dimension to this ongoing controversy. It is illustrated with a dozen maps, two dozen tables, and eight pages of full-colour plates. The text is complemented by a detailed chronology, beginning with a law of the sixth century BC that attributed rewards for destroying wolves, and ending with reports of wolf attacks in the Vercors massif, near Grenoble, in early 2011. A very detailed bibliography, running to 20 pages of small type, demonstrates the wealth of historical research into this topic. Professor Moriceau’s next objective is to extend his enquiry into the controversial relationship of wolves to mankind from France to the continent of Europe at large.