MAJOR DISCOVERY IN THE NETHERLANDS: The grave of the legendary d’Artagnan, hero of the story of The Three Musketeers, has been found!

More than three and a half centuries after a musket ball ended the life of an exceptional swordsman, the French soldier who inspired Alexandre Dumas and became immortal on stage and screen may reappear.

Workers repairing a church in the Dutch city of Maastricht discovered a skeleton that could belong to the 17th-century Gascon nobleman Charles de Batz-Castelmore – better known as d’Artagnan – whose deeds led Dumas to make him the hero of the novel “The Three Musketeers” (Les Trois Mousquetaires), The Guardian reports.

The real d’Artagnan was a spy and musketeer for King Louis XIV, who was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673.

Three hundred fifty-three years later, the long-standing mystery of where the warrior was buried may finally have been solved, thanks to bones found beneath the church floor.

Wim Dijkman, a retired archaeologist from Maastricht who spent 28 years searching for the musketeer’s final resting place, was called to the Church of Saint Peter and Paul after a deacon told him that a skeleton had been found.

Deacon Jos Falke said that several pieces of evidence indicate that the skeleton belongs to the famous musketeer.

“He was buried beneath the altar on consecrated ground. There was a French coin from that period in the grave. And the bullet that killed him was lying at chest level, exactly as described in historical books. The indications are very strong,” he said.

The skeleton has been removed from the church and is now located at an archaeological institute in Deventer.

A DNA sample taken from the skeleton on March 13 is being analyzed in a laboratory in Munich. After that, it will be compared with DNA samples of descendants of d’Artagnan’s father to determine a match.

“This is, after all, an incredibly exciting story. But I am always very cautious, I am a scientist,” Dijkman said.

Interest in the potential discovery is certainly not limited to Maastricht.

Dijkman said:

“Various analyses and investigations are being carried out both in the country and abroad. This has truly become a high-level investigation. We want to be completely certain that it is d’Artagnan.”

The soldier gained enormous posthumous fame after Dumas published “The Three Musketeers” in 1844.

Dumas drew inspiration from an earlier book about the musketeer, “Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan,” written in 1700 by the French soldier and writer Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras.

Dumas’s novel has been adapted for the screen numerous times over the past century, and d’Artagnan has been portrayed by actors such as Douglas Fairbanks, Michael York, Chris O’Donnell, Logan Lerman and François Civil.

The character was also reimagined as a sword-wielding beagle in the early 1980s animated series “Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds.”