A broken floor tile in a Dutch church may have just solved a 350-year-old mystery.

Workers repairing subsided flooring at St Peter and Paul Church in Maastricht discovered a skeleton buried beneath where the altar once stood. The deacon, Jos Valke, called an archaeologist. They found a French coin from 1660, a lead bullet fragment at chest height, and bones laid to rest in the most consecrated ground imaginable.

“Only royals or other people of rank were buried there,” Valke told local broadcaster L1 Nieuws. He’s now 99 percent certain the remains belong to Charles de Batz de Castelmore — better known as d’Artagnan.

The real d’Artagnan was no fiction. He served as captain-lieutenant of King Louis XIV’s musketeers and died during the siege of Maastricht on June 25, 1673, struck in the throat by a musket ball. His body was buried locally; transporting it to Paris in midsummer heat would have been impossible.

Alexandre Dumas transformed him into literature’s most famous swashbuckler in 1844. The bullet found in the grave matches historical accounts. A contemporary letter placed his burial in consecrated ground. “When you add it all up, it seems plausible,” Valke said.

Archaeologist Wim Dijkman, who has spent 28 years searching for this grave, is more cautious. “I’m always very cautious, I’m a scientist,” he told L1 Nieuws. DNA from a jawbone is being tested in Munich against samples from d’Artagnan’s paternal descendants. Results are pending.

The floor collapsed in February. History has a sense of timing.

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