The Three Musketeers’ D’Artagnan Actually Existed and Now His Body May Have Been Found After 353 Years

French author Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers is one of the most famous novels of all time, later begetting a slew of movie and television adaptations. But you might not have known that the Musketeers were based on actual historical figures. Yes, D’Artagnan was a real guy and now his long lost remains may have finally been found under the floor of a Dutch church.

As The BBC reports: “Jos Valke, who is deacon at St Peter and Paul Church in Maastricht, helped unearth the skeleton and is 99% certain that the remains belong to Charles de Batz de Castelmore, a close aide to France’s Sun King Louis XIV who was known as Count d’Artagnan. D’Artagnan was killed during the Siege of Maastricht in 1673, but later immortalised in the adventure stories of Alexandre Dumas as a friend of the Three Musketeers.”

Count d’Artagnan’s body was long rumored to rest at the church, but this is the first time anyone has investigated enough to find any possible evidence. The floor’s tiles were broken, allowing Deacon Valke to literally dig a little deeper into the matter.

Archaeologist Wim Dijkman, who said he’s researched D’Artagnan’s grave for 28 years, was enlisted and is the one who discovered the bones buried underneath where an altar table had stood two centuries before.

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While Dijkman wants to wait on DNA test results before confirming the remains belong to D’Artagnan, Valke is more confident that they’ve finally found their man.

“He was buried on sacred ground below where the altar was; we found the bullet that put an end to his life and we found a coin from 1660 in his grave, and it was from the bishop who attended Mass for the Roi Soleil,” Valke told the BBC.

Analysis on the remains are currently underway in Germany and in the Netherlands.

Just as Dumas based D’Artagnan on the real musketeer Charles de Batz de Castelmore, he also based Athos on Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Auteville, Porthos on Isaac de Portau, and Aramis on Henri de Aramitz.

The adventures of D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis have graced the screen since the silent era. The 1970s saw a pair of star-studded Musketeer films starring Michael York as D’Artagnan. The 1990s gave us Disney’s The Three Musketeers (starring Chris O’Donnell as D’Artagnan) and The Man in the Iron Mask (where Gabriel Byrne played an older D’Artagnan opposite Leonard DiCaprio in dual roles as the title character and the wicked king).

Most recently, there has been 2001’s The Musketeer, Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2011 film, the BBC series The Musketeers, and the French language two-parter The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady.

Nintendo also released a Three Musketeers game back in 2006.