The skeleton of a French nobleman whose life inspired Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers may have been found buried in a church in the Dutch city of Maastricht, officials say.
Workers discovered a grave containing human remains underneath tiles after part of the floor of St Peter and Paul Church subsided last month, triggering a challenge to identify the skeleton through DNA testing.
The bones are suspected to be those of Charles de Batz de Castelmore d’Artagnan – known simply as d’Artagnan in the famed 1844 novel.
The real d’Artagnan, a spy and musketeer for France’s “Sun King”, King Louis XIV, was killed in the Siege of Maastricht in 1673 when he was struck in the throat by a musket ball.
The church, which stands near the site where the French army camped, had previously been identified as a possible resting place for the soldier.
Transporting his body back from Maastricht to Paris in the summer heat would have been difficult.
Scientists have now retrieved DNA from a jawbone of the skeleton to test it and compare it with that of descendants of d’Artagnan.
“This has truly become a top-level investigation, in which we want to be absolutely certain — or as certain as possible — whether it is the famous musketeer, who was killed here near Maastricht,” said archaeologist Wim Dijkman.
Deacon Jos Valke said other clues found at the burial spot included a coin dated 1660 and part of a lead bullet.
“He lay buried under the altar in consecrated ground,” he said. “There was a French coin from that time in the grave. And the bullet that killed him was lying at chest level, exactly as described in the history books. The indications are very strong.”
The fictional d’Artagnan, the hero of The Three Musketeers, was a hot-headed teenager who was a friend of the original three – and became the fourth.
In screen adaptations of Dumas’s story, d’Artagnan has been played by actors including Douglas Fairbanks and Michael York.