Skeleton unearthed in Russia may be Napoleonic general

Archaeologists are set to reveal whether a one-legged skeleton found under a dance floor in Russia solves a centuries-old mystery involving Napoleon's favourite general.

Charles-Étienne Gudin died aged 44 after he was hit by a cannonball during the French invasion of Russia in 1812.

He had to have his leg amputated and died three days later from gangrene, BBC News reports.

The DNA results of a skeleton unearthed in the city of Smolensk, west of Moscow, will be announced on Thursday.

A team of Russian and French archaeologists found the skeleton in a wooden coffin in a park beneath building foundations in July.

The remains, they said, displayed injuries consistent with those sustained by Gudin, a veteran of both the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

At the time of his death, the French army removed Gudin's heart and buried it in Paris, but the whereabouts of his skeleton remained unknown.

"As soon as I saw the skeleton with just one leg, I knew that we had our man," the head of the archaeological team, Marina Nesterova, told AFP news agency.