Archaeologists in the Netherlands believe they may have discovered the remains of Charles de Batz-Castelmore, the 17th-century French soldier better known as d’Artagnan, who inspired Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Three Musketeers. The skeleton was found beneath a collapsed floor at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Maastricht, where d’Artagnan died during the siege of 1673.
Deacon Jos Valke, who discovered the bones during repair work, called retired archaeologist Wim Dijkman, who has spent 28 years searching for the musketeer’s grave. Valke noted several clues: the skeleton was buried under the altar in consecrated ground, a French coin from the period was found in the grave, and a musket ball lay at chest level, matching historical accounts of d’Artagnan’s death from a throat wound.
The skeleton has been moved to an archaeological institute in Deventer for analysis. A DNA sample taken on 13 March is being tested in a Munich laboratory against samples from descendants of d’Artagnan’s father. Dijkman, cautious as a scientist, awaits the results, calling it “an incredibly exciting story.”
D’Artagnan gained posthumous fame after Dumas published The Three Musketeers in 1844, inspired by earlier memoirs. The character has been portrayed in numerous films and even as a cartoon dog in the 1980s series Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds.
