Portrait of Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan

Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan

French-Occitan captain

Lived
1611–1673
Country
France

Updated September 2026

About Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, also known as d'Artagnan and later Count d'Artagnan, was a French soldier who served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard. He died at the siege of Maastricht in the Franco-Dutch War. A fictionalised account of his life by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras formed the basis for the d'Artagnan Romances of Alexandre Dumas, most famously including The Three Musketeers (1844). The heavily fictionalised version of d'Artagnan featured in Dumas' works and their subsequent screen adaptations is now far more widely known than the real historical figure.

Biography from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources: book lists and dates from Wikidata and Open Library, ratings from Open Library readers. Last updated September 2026.