Damaged church floor may have revealed the grave of the fourth musketeer

Recent repairs to a centuries-old tile floor at a church in the Netherlands may have revealed the skeleton of the French Musketeer d’Artagnan.

Today, Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Count d’Artagnan, is best known as a character in The Three Musketeers, written by Alexandre Dumas and eventually played by both Gene Kelly and future Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—but he was a real French military officer and spy. D’Artagnan died during a siege, and the whereabouts of his body have remained a mystery for more than 350 years. But an archaeologist in the Netherlands recently unearthed a skeleton from the floor of a 17th-century church that could actually be d’Artagnan.

“It is only the dead who do not return”

The ground beneath the centuries-old Saints Peter and Paul Church subsided earlier this year, cracking a few of the blue tiles that pave the chapel’s floor. During repairs, church staff decided to have a look beneath the floor to see if there was any truth to the rumor that d’Artagnan—famous French Musketeer and inspiration for a series of swashbuckling novels—lay buried beneath their church. It turns out that there actually was a skeleton buried under the church floor, and there’s a decent chance it’s d’Artagnan himself.

Fragments of a lead musket ball lay mingled with the bones, hinting at a cause of death that would match d’Artagnan’s, since history records that he was shot in the throat while charging the walls of Maastricht in June 1673. A coin from 1660 also lay in the grave. And the location itself suggests that whoever the skeleton once belonged to, it was somebody important; ordinary townsfolk didn’t usually rate burial in a prime spot right beneath the altar table.

But none of those clues provide definite evidence that this was the famed Musketeer. A sample taken from the skeleton’s jawbone is on its way to Germany for DNA sequencing; those sequences will be compared to d’Artagnan’s living relatives. Meanwhile, forensic anthropologists in Deventer, in the Netherlands, will examine the skeleton for clues about how old the person was when they died and whether they were more likely male or female.

“I’m a scientist, but my expectations are high,” Wim Dijkman, archaeologist and curator for the city of Maastricht, who excavated the skeleton, told the BBC. “I’ve already been researching d’Artagnan’s grave for 28 years. This could be the highlight of my career.”

“After all, it is our business to risk our lives”

The King’s Musketeers are best known to most of us today from Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers. They were the top-tier unit of the 17th-century French military, two companies of light cavalry under the king’s personal command, made up entirely of noblemen with muskets and fast horses. They served as the king’s personal guard whenever he left the palace (he had a whole other guard unit at home, where they presumably didn’t need the fast horses). D’Artagnan became their captain-lieutenant in 1667. The unit would later include a young Marquis de Lafayette, who then went on to do some other stuff.

And in 1673, the Musketeers were part of the French forces besieging the Dutch city of Maastricht because Louis XIV had decided to invade what was then called the Dutch Republic. It ended rather poorly for d’Artagnan, among numerous others, as battles tend to do.

D’Artagnan probably attended Mass at Saints Peter and Paul on the morning of June 25, 1673, as he did most days during the siege. The French army had set up its headquarters nearby, in what was then the village of Wolder, just outside Maastrich’s city walls (today, Wolder is a district of the city). And by nightfall, as French historian Odile Bordaz suggested in 2008, d’Artagnan’s body was entombed beneath the altar where he had taken Communion that morning.