Suleiman leads a very large Ottoman army in besieging the fortress town of Szigetvár, taking as pretexts for war the failure of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II to pay the tribute due for Hungarian and Austrian attacks made against Ottoman-held Transylvania.
Now seventy-two and still desirous of avenging his defeat at Erlau in the Austro-Turkish War of 1551-53, Suleiman seeks a final vindication of both himself and Ottoman prestige.
Although the Turks destroy the town, they are unable to reduce the fortress, whose forty-eight-year-old Croatian commander, Mklos Zrinyi, swears to fight to the last soldier.
Zrinyi, aware in early September that the cannon-battered fortress walls are near collapse, sets time fuses to his powder magazine and leads his men in a valiant, if suicidal, sortie against the besiegers.
Suleiman had died two days earlier, but his death is kept secret so as not to interfere with the besieger’s morale.
With Zrinyi and his men lying dead before the crumbling walls, some three thousand Turks charge into the fortress and are blown to pieces when the magazine explodes.
Their surviving fellows, informed of their sultan’s demise, return his embalmed body to Istanbul for burial.
