When Men Fight Wars with Wolves

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Wartime Stories early and ad-free right now.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

For as long as humans have fought wars against each other, the very earth we live on has been just as dangerous and no less merciful than the cruelest among our enemies, if it is not respected.

While nature certainly cares not for the violence we commit against each other, war has often simultaneously placed civilized men in a fight against the wild and unforgiving expanses of nature.

It thus occasionally sets man not only against his human enemy, but against the opportunistic predator,

those animals likewise driven by their instinct to survive.

This is part one of the story of man

against wolf.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

Wolves are among the most recognizable animals on Earth.

Despite the expansion of human settlements and mankind's intentional eradication of wolves across the globe over the centuries, these canine animals continue to inhabit large areas of nearly every continent north of the equator.

Perhaps not so ironically, despite the obvious differences, wolves have much in common with humans.

As evolutionary demands would dictate, they come in many shapes and sizes, varying in appearance and in their social behavior, based largely on the environments in which they have adapted to survive.

Like humans, wolves are considered to be complex and highly intelligent.

They continue to thrive due to their social hierarchy.

They hunt in small packs, care for their injured and young cubs, and live together in family groups.

Similar to humans, wolves are largely territorial.

They prefer hunting in a defined area and viciously defend its boundaries, especially against unfamiliar wolves.

These areas typically occupy around 50 square miles.

In search of prey, wolves will traverse as much as 30 miles of their hunting hunting grounds in a single day.

However, their range can extend outwards of 1,000 square miles when prey becomes scarce due to varying conditions, particularly natural disasters such as unusually harsh winters.

In this way, again like humans, wolves are known to be semi-nomadic, occasionally relocating their hunting grounds across vast areas in pursuit of a vanishing food supply.

While they are known to hunt smaller animals, including rabbits and other various rodents, as well as fish, the diet of bigger wolves demands for bigger prey.

Those large wolves found in northern Europe and across the Asian continent, ranging from five to seven feet in length and weighing as much as 180 pounds or 80 kilograms, predominantly hunt large ungulates, including wild boar, caribou, and various deer.

Wolves are known to hunt for days without eating and may consume as much as 20 pounds of meat in a single meal, especially if they have not eaten for a length of time due to a scarce food supply.

It is worth mentioning that wolves' sense of smell is so acute they can detect prey up to one and a half miles away.

When they find their prey, they typically surround larger animals, then proceeding to viciously attack the face or the legs and back, tearing away at the flesh with their sharp teeth in order to quickly incapacitate their prey and thus prevent injury to themselves.

While they may finally kill the struggling animal by crushing its trachea or otherwise ripping its throat out, members of the pack often begin feasting on their downed prey while it's still alive, disemboweling the animal to first get at the soft liver and other consumable organs, as well as the fatty tissues, soft abdominal meat, and thicker portions of the legs.

Although wolves will often select weaker prey out of necessity, they prefer healthier animals.

Hunting in packs is their advantage.

Despite a wolf pack averaging a mere six wolves, they have been witnessed taking down fully grown bull moose, incredibly large animals that are known to be highly aggressive, responding with extreme violence when provoked.

They can formidably grow as tall as seven and a half feet, weighing as much as 10 times that of the average wolf.

At its strongest, a wolf's bite has been estimated at over 1,200 psi, with the average wolf being said to easily chew through a moose femur in a mere 6-8 bites.

Putting that into perspective, crushing a human's skull requires just over 500 psi.

As wolves are carnivorous animals, those regions plentiful with food thus inhabit the largest among wolf species.

Unfortunately, for some, among the human inhabitants of Europe, Russia, and the Asian continent, as well as those men sent sent to fight international wars in those regions, some of the most formidable species of wolves inhabit these areas, being highly adapted for survival in even the coldest and most inhospitable of climates.

Despite humans being an irregular food source, desperate times inexorably call for desperate measures.

The story of wolves and mankind predates recorded history, with scientists still debating such questions as the origin of domesticated dogs, potentially as far back as 40,000 years ago.

However, what is less under speculation is whether humans were always at the top of the food chain, with the question remaining debatable, even today.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

As many of you know, Mr.

Balin and Balin Studios have been a huge help in bringing this podcast to life.

And if you'd like to believe you are something of a storytelling connoisseur, then you need to check out Mr.

Balin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.

Each week, Mr.

Balin weaves gripping tales of the strange, dark, and mysterious, diving into true crime, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal events that keep you on the edge of your seat.

Mr.

Balin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, is available on all podcast platforms, and it is free, just like ours.

There are hundreds of episodes available to binge right now with new episodes twice a week.

Go listen to the Mr.

Balin podcast today.

When either natural disasters such as harsh weather or earthquakes or man-made disasters such as war impact the availability of their usual prey, wolves often resort to straying into human territory, first attacking any available livestock.

When the sheep, cattle, and horses have been expended, even recent history will demonstrate that their next target may very likely be humans.

The killing and consumption of humans by wolves most certainly predates ancient history, if not simply indicated by the many enduring folktales involving dangerous wolves or even mythological werewolves, It is otherwise made obvious by the fact that in various regions of the world, wolves continue to present a potential threat to present-day humans.

Nowhere is this modern occurrence of wolf attacks more prevalent than in Russia.

The most recent occurred in early January of 2021, when an unarmed Russian farmer suffered various injuries while stopping a wolf from attacking his horse and cattle after it had already killed his two dogs.

Fighting the animal barehanded, he strangled it to death.

Other villagers in this area of Novotroitsky say that such wolf attacks on dogs and farm animals are becoming far more common after the destruction of forests in the region.

However, less frequent attacks on Russian citizens in recent years have still occurred in widespread locations around the vast country.

Unlike North America and Russia, wolves have evidently remained a recurring threat to human life over the centuries.

The unnamed farmer may very well consider himself lucky for having survived his deadly wolf encounter.

In his 2007 publication, Wolves in Russia, Anxiety Through the Ages, a compilation of 50 years of combined research on Russian wolves, author Will N.

Graves asserts that a healthy, athletic man may fend off an attack by one wolf, but he will always lose to a pack unless he is well armed.

One reason why we have not had as many wolf attacks on people in North America is that the populace is armed.

That we have not heard more about indigenous wolves since the fall of Tsarist Russia, Graves says, is a function of the communist government suppressing such information.

If people knew how really dangerous wolves were, the people would demand to be well armed, but an armed populace could lead to revolution.

Graves goes on to say that decreasing wolf attacks over the centuries are likewise attributed to the deliberate hunting and killing of wolves to control their populations, especially in those regions of North America, Europe, and Asia where wolf attacks were once considered common.

However, when these areas are left undefended for several years, such as when most of their men are sent away to fight in a war, wolf populations left unchecked can rapidly increase.

When a number of such natural and man-made factors randomly coincide, and an increasing wolf population occurs along with a disastrous decline in their food supply, wolves become desperate.

Due to their territorial nature, intense rivalry can occur between wolf packs under most normal conditions.

They do not tolerate each other, the exception being times of dire necessity.

Starving wolves will occasionally break these instinctive tendencies.

Small packs of these previously rival animals will uncharacteristically combine into what is known as a super pack.

potentially escalating into a pack of hundreds of these now ravenous predators.

While notably rare due to the unusual combination of various disasters, when these starving animals happen upon a large amount of unexpectedly accessible prey, including humans, they have been known to indiscriminately slaughter every living thing that they can, even leaving much of the unconsumed and mutilated carcasses behind.

In his research, Will Graves refers to this erratic wolf behavior as surplus killing.

In the 2003 publication, simply titled Wolves, contributing author Dr.

L.

David Meck states that it is rare for wolves to kill wild prey in surplus.

All cases of surplus killing of wild prey reported for wolves have occurred during a few weeks in late winter or spring when snow was unusually deep.

This appears accurate as throughout recorded history, abnormally massive or otherwise aggressive wolf packs appear to have occurred during abnormally harsh winters, with these events since becoming fabled by mankind.

Due to their usual supply of prey vanishing, either due to the animals fleeing the area or dying, these events may culminate with wolf attacks on humans.

While present-day humans around the world may find themselves better equipped to prevent such animal predations, as emphasized by Will Graves, historical records would reveal that the same cannot be said for many unfortunate citizens of 15th century France.

With Europe's extensively recorded and published history of wolf attacks possibly outstripping that of other modern nations, Professor Jean-Marc Morissot indicates in his research that France has long held the record for the largest number of fatal wolf attacks occurring during the 400-year period between the late 15th and 19th centuries.

Indeed, Professor Mauriceot suggests, this appears validated by the late 17th century French publication of Charlé Perrault's Mother Goose Tales, as hundreds of Little Red Riding Hoods and Little Thumblings were attacked by wolves every year.

As much as modern wolves may teach their cubs to avoid humans, humans have long found ways to warn their children to avoid wolves.

A possible inspiration for such French fairy tales is the purportedly true 15th century story of the legendary Colteau.

a massive man-eating wolf, which apparently, whether entirely true or not, remains a prominent footnote in the history of French wolf attacks.

The exact year of the event is presented differently across various sources, occurring either in 1438, 1439, or as late as 1450.

However, a paper published by the Ushka Center for Climate Change Research in 2015, comprising data from over 3,000 medieval records from over 100 sources, indicates that France experienced the very coldest temperatures of the entire second millennium in the 1430s, the last year of these exceptional temperatures being recorded in 1438, this year likely being the most accurate for the event.

As with other similar wolf encounters, these abnormal conditions may well lend credibility to the story.

In any case, the proliferation of man-eating wolves could not have come at a worse time for the French people.

As during this particularly miserable Parisian winter, in the midst of the Hundred Years' War between Great Britain and France, France was to be found already struggling on several fronts.

Despite the recent end of the concurrent French Civil War, the recent liberation of Paris, and an increasing number of French victories in the now century-long conflict, morale among the Parisian peasantry was expectedly despondent as the year came to a close.

City residents and nearby villagers found themselves suffering through not only hunger, frigid weather, and yet another outbreak of bubonic plague, but now the very real threat of being mauled to death in the city streets by an increasingly fearless pack of starving wolves.

In his 1937 book, Mainly About Wolves, Ernest Seaton vividly describes this scene.

As the snow grew deeper and food grew scarcer, the wolves grew more hungry and more daring.

A single traveler, yes, even a small group of travelers, had no chance of escape if they entered the wolf-infested belt of woods that stretched around Paris.

Mad with hunger and with less travelers now on the roads due to the inclement weather, a renegade pack of hundreds of wolves soon abandoned the Parisian forests, roaming the nearby hamlets and villages, indiscriminately attacking both people and the various livestock which grazed around the walls of the fortified city.

Humans soon became a preferred target, with wolves remarkably leaving behind untouched sheep, horses, and cattle.

These wolves were apparently led by a massive, red-colored alpha male, whom the locals had, for several years, witnessed to roam the countryside and had since nicknamed him Koto, roughly translating to bobtail.

During one of the wolf pack's daring attempts to enter the city, following after a herd of livestock on its way to market, the guards had raised the alarm and dropped the portcullis, the falling gate apparently severing the pack leader's tail as he fled from underneath it, thus earning him the name.

Fearing the loss of their remaining cattle and sheep, Parisians began tossing the bodies of plague victims over the wall, hoping that the disease-ridden bodies would be consumed by the wolves and thus spread the deadly disease to the pack.

The wolves hungrily ravaged the human corpses, but, unfortunately, only modern research would indicate that wild carnivores are rarely affected by bubonic plague.

The plan failed miserably, as the wolves did not contract the disease, and it would appear the Parisians' efforts only served to give the starving animals greater motivation to find an entrance into the city in search of living prey.

Their reign of terror would soon reach its peak, as one evening the wolves discovered a previously inaccessible three-foot opening in the city wall.

where the now frozen Seine River passed underneath it.

They then slipped into the unsuspecting city and began prowling the vacant streets, chasing after dogs and other animals, before encountering a welcomed sight of some 40 men in the Notre Dame Square as these clergymen were departing from the cathedral.

A horrific scene ensued.

The sounds of men's screams filled the night air as they became increasingly outnumbered and swarmed by the relentless predators.

Within 20 minutes, not a single one of the defenseless men remained alive.

It is presumed that the witnesses to this event dared not enter into the bloody fray to offer assistance, as they themselves would quickly become victims.

Having gorged themselves on human flesh, the wolves departed the city within an hour.

before a significant number of residents could assemble to do anything to stop them.

According to Ernest Seaton, not a single wolf was slain.

Understandably, the wolves' ability to enter the guarded city and commit such an atrocity resulted in widespread fear and mass hysteria.

The captain of the city guard, a man named Boussolière, thus requested that the king permit him to lay a baited trap for the wolves, while residents sheltered indoors.

The gate over the river was to be raised several feet over the ice to permit the wolves' entry.

The street entrances to the square of Notre Dame were to be barricaded, with a single entrance to remain, but with the construction of a gate that could be quickly lowered from a high window, thus trapping the incautious wolves inside the square.

The captain ordered that no man or beast was to leave the city for the next fortnight, no garbage to be cast over the wall, thus robbing the wolves of any potential food.

All garbage was to be instead scattered around the square, with any livestock that was to be slaughtered for food to be slaughtered in the square, so as to drench the ground in the scent of as much blood as possible.

The unused entrails of the animals were then to be dragged from the raised gate over the river down the frozen ice and all the way back to the cathedral, the intestines then left in the square as additional bait.

For several days a number of wolves, Colteau not among them, cautiously approached the river entrance, sniffing curiously.

The effort to lure the intelligent beasts with spare beef and garbage appeared futile, until, after 10 days, when the captain resigned to order the slaughtering of an additional number of 20 healthy cattle in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Likely now desperate, in broad daylight, hundreds of wolves, led by their crimson alpha and their keen sense of smell, finally entered the city to begin their feast.

Beausolier himself lowered the gate behind them.

Now entrapped in the square, with citizens of the city crowding around windows, walls, and nearby roofs to watch the spectacle, the men of the city began laying siege to the wolf pack with arrows.

Many wolves were dead within the hour, with many more of the quick wolves either avoiding the arrows or ripping them out, failing to fall from a single wound.

With archers continuing to sling their arrows into the mass of hundreds of swarming beasts, the great Corteaux had found refuge in the center of the square, protected by a large fountain.

still accompanied by dozens of surviving wolves.

Offering his salute to the king, Beausolier, accompanied by a group of skilled fighters, descended a ladder into the square, as the gate was raised to allow dozens of wolfhounds to be sent into the fray to finish off the remaining wolves.

Then came a scene that all the world would thrill to see, Seton writes, The king wolf rose, gave one great gathering howl, the war cry of his race, and at the dogs they went.

The battle lasted half an hour, and every dog went down.

Great Corteaux slew a dozen in that fray, and not a wolf was slain, but few were hurt.

Beausolier and his men then attacked with their long spears, killing a number of wolves, but sacrificing several men in the effort, with many being savagely bitten.

Fleeing from their sharp spears, the pack leader and his remaining wolves dashed for the doorway of the church, taking refuge in the stone archway.

With Beausolier and his men forming a fresh attack to end these remaining wolves, the last to remain standing was the pack leader himself.

Seton concludes the epic battle, writing, Then, Ausolier, a valiant man, a lover of an even fight, cried out,

hold back, since only he is left and challenged me, we'll settle this in a single fight, and charged with his lance as knight against night.

The great wolf reared and sprang to meet him.

The lance went through his chest, but he sprang with all his force, slid up the lance, and the man went down, and Corteaux, with his fearful slashing fangs, cut through the leather jerkin, ripped the throat strap of his helm, and tore his throat out as he lay.

Down, down they fell at grips.

Their red lives gushed, the great grim wolf and the brave, strong man.

They lay in death.

Together.

The cathedral bells were then said to ring out, followed by others from various churches.

300 wolves were counted among the dead, as the city of Paris celebrated the end of the Great Corteaux's reign of terror.

While these last series of events appear likely embellished due to the seemingly convenient survival of Corteau as the last wolf standing, not to mention the glorified simultaneous death of both the Great Wolf and Captain Beausolier,

There does appear to be some terrible amount of truth in the overall story.

Certainly, the people of France would continue to be plagued by recurring wolf attacks over the following centuries.

The horrific stories of the beast of Géboudon and the wolf of Soissons counted among them.

However, with Europeans' increasing efforts to eradicate such predators from their settlements, there would be few, if any, recorded accounts of such a significant pack of wolves for nearly the next 500 years, in the early 20th century, when almost the entire European continent found itself itself immersed in the First World War.

In early 1917, amidst bitter cold temperatures along the lines of the war's Eastern Front, morale among Russian and German soldiers was as abysmal as the weather, as they miserably fought each other in and out of foxholes, the ground often being too frozen to dig trenches.

Indeed, temperatures that winter would prove to be exceptionally low, coincidentally proving to be one of the coldest winters of the entire century, not only in that region of northern Europe and Russia, but throughout the entire northern hemisphere.

As with the people of Paris, so many centuries before them, despite harsh weather and the ongoing war around them, soldiers on both sides would soon find themselves suffering an even worse fate, unaware that they were now being hunted by a common enemy.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Whitlacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddum.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Clogson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.