“I’m a scientist, but I have high expectations,” said Wim Dijkman, the archaeologist and curator of the city of Maastricht, who dug up the skeleton. told the BBC. “I’ve been investigating d’Artagnan’s tomb for 28 years now. This may be the highlight of my career.”
“After all, risking our lives is our job.”
Today, most of us know the King’s Musketeers from the novel by Alexandre Dumas The three musketeers. They were the elite unit of the 17th-century French army, two light cavalry units composed entirely of musketry and fast-mounted nobles under the personal command of the king. They served as the king’s personal bodyguard when he left the palace (he had another bodyguard at home, presumably because they didn’t need fast horses there). D’Artagnan became their captain-lieutenant in 1667, and the young Marquis de Lafayette would soon take over his command. some other things.
And in 1673, the Musketeers were part of the French forces besieging the Dutch city of Maastricht, as Louis XIV decided to invade what was then called the Dutch Republic. For D’Artagnan, among many others, it ended very badly, as in battles.
D’Artagnan attended the mass at St. Peter and Paul on the morning of June 25, 1673, as he probably did on most days during the siege. The French army had its headquarters just outside the city walls of Maastricht, near the then village of Wolder (today Wolder is a district of the city). As the French historian Odile Bordaz reported in 2008, towards evening, d’Artagnan’s body was buried under the altar where he had celebrated communion that morning.
According to the church records of other churches in the region, high-ranking officers who died during the siege would be buried in the nearest church. Based on the siege maps of the area around Maastricht by Bordaz and his colleagues, the closest church to the musketeers’ camp would be St. Peter and Paul in Walder.
