Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan was killed in battle in Maastricht on 25 June 1673. For more than three and a half centuries, nobody really knew where he ended up. But last month, something rather remarkable happened. Workers repairing a cracked church floor in the Wolder district stumbled upon human remains that may finally answer the question.
Here's the thing about d'Artagnan: most people know him as a swashbuckling young officer in Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel, mate. But the real Charles de Batz de Castelmore served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard and died at the siege of Maastricht in the Franco-Dutch War. The heavily fictionalised version of d'Artagnan featured in Dumas' works and their subsequent screen adaptations is now far more widely known than the real historical figure.
In February, the floor of the church collapsed, revealing a skeleton, with what was left of a musket bullet at chest height, and a French coin. When Deacon Jos Valke realised what he was looking at, he immediately got on the phone to archaeologist Wim Dijkman, who has been searching for d'Artagnan's remains for 28 years. Fair dinkum, if you're going to find this bloke, he's your man.
"The skeleton was found where the altar used to be," deacon Jos Valke told L1Nieuws. "Only royals or other people of rank were buried there", he said. The evidence is building. A 17th-century French coin. A bullet lodged exactly where history books say d'Artagnan was struck. D'Artagnan, the leader of King Louis XIV's elite corps of gentlemen, died in battle in 1673 during the French siege of Maastricht, probably from a wound in the chest caused by a musket bullet.
But here's where we pump the brakes. A DNA sample was taken from the skeleton on March 13 and is currently being analysed in a laboratory in Munich. Dijkman told the outlet that DNA tests should be complete within the next few weeks. "I'm always very cautious, I'm a scientist. But I have high expectations," he told L1 Nieuws.
You've got to hand it to the researchers for keeping their heads. Yes, everything points to this being the remains of a high-ranking 17th-century soldier who died by musket fire. Yes, he's buried in sacred ground beneath an altar, exactly where legends suggest d'Artagnan would have been placed. But the burial was not registered in the church archives and no other proof was ever found until the floor gave way. Science moves carefully. Proof matters more than excitement.
A fictionalised account of his life by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras formed the basis for the d'Artagnan Romances of Alexandre Dumas père, most famously including The Three Musketeers (1844). D'Artagnan was born at the Château de Castelmore near Lupiac in south-western France. The real d'Artagnan lived a soldier's life, rose through the ranks, and died doing what he'd done for decades. The fictional version got the swashbuckling bit right. The adventure. The loyalty to mates. The rest, well, that's where Dumas took his liberties.
If the DNA confirms what the physical evidence suggests, it'll be one of those moments when fact and legend finally shake hands. A working archaeologist's dreams realised. A mystery that's haunted historians for centuries solved not by grand design but by a crumbling church floor. That's the kind of story that makes you fall in love with the past all over again.