in which a vastly outnumbered army of 2,300 Croatian and Hungarian soldiers in service to the Habsburg monarchy and under the command of Nikola IV Zrinski, the Ban of Croatia, defended the Hungarian fortress of the same name against an enormous Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, has thrice been made the subject of epic poetry. Historically, the Battle of Szigetvár concluded shortly after the death of the Sultan from natural causes inside his tent. In response, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, a Serbian Orthodox convert to Islam named Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, secretly executed all witnesses to the Sultan's death and concealed it to keep the Army's morale from breaking. Soon after, on 7 September 1566, Captain Zrinski's forces, having been greatly depleted, opened the fortress gates and rode out in a ferocious onslaught. Approximately six hundred Hungarian and Croatian soldiers charged with sabers flying into the Turkish camp. During a counter-attack led by Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Nikola Zrinski was struck down by two gunshots in the chest and an arrow to the face. He is said to have died smiling, possibly thinking of the one last surprise he had left behind for the Turks. As Turkish janissaries poured into the fortress, a slow-burning fuse set off a massive explosion in the gunpowder magazine. The fortress of Szigetvár and more than 3,000 Turkish soldiers were blown to bits, in addition to the nearly 30,000 Turks who had already fallen during the Siege. Even though the Grand Vizier claimed victory, the campaign, which had planned to besiege and capture Vienna, ended after the deaths of both Zrinski and the Sultan and the Army retreated to Belgrade, where Selim II, the son of Suleiman the Magnificent and Hurrem Sultan, was acclaimed as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, Nikola Zrinski was acclaimed as a hero throughout Christendom. Cardinal Richelieu, the Minister of State to King Louis XIII of France, famously described the Siege of Szigetvár as "the battle that saved civilization". Nikola Zrinski remains a national hero in both Croatia and Hungary and is often portrayed in artworks. The first epic poem about the Siege was composed in Croatian by the poet Brne Karnarutić of Zadar, titled Vazetje Sigeta grada (English: The Taking of the City of Siget), and posthumously published at Venice in 1584. Karnarutić is known to have based his account very heavily on