Ahmed retorted by opening a fire on the town and citadel from 120 guns, some of which sped balls of fifty pounds as far as the bastion, but eighteen days elapsed before the enemy could summon up sufficient courage to try an assault. It proved ineffectual, the assailants being gallantly repulsed by the Hungarians. A few days later a great calamity befell the denizens of the citadel. The powder magazine, struck by a hostile ball, exploded, and a portion of the wall of the citadel was thrown down by the explosion. Taking advantage of the wild confusion the explosion had created amongst the garrison, the enemy directed another assault against their works, but quite as ineffectually as before. They were driven back; Dobó had the wall repaired, and in the cellar vaults he established a gunpowder factory, which proved sufficient to furnish the necessary supply.
After several unsuccessful minor attacks, the Turks prepared for the great final assault. They came against the fortress in overwhelming numbers on every side, and already the garrison began to show symptoms of exhaustion and wavering. At that moment of supreme danger, however, the gallant defenders of the citadel obtained help from quite an unlooked-for quarter. Wives, mothers, and daughters armed themselves, and rushed to the walls to fight by the side of their dear ones. Some of these amazons robbed the dead of their swords, and rushed, thus armed, where the enemy was thickest; others brought boiling water and oil, and poured it upon the heads of those who attempted to scale the walls; and, with the help of these brave women, the assault was beaten back at the most dangerous points. The women of Erlau had a large share in the saving of the city, and the fame of their heroic devotion still survives in Hungary. The Turks were quite panic-struck; in one day alone they lost 8,000 men: and the soldiers loudly declared that God was fighting on the side of the Hungarians, and who could struggle against God? After a siege of thirty-eight days, the Turkish army at length withdrew, and Dobó and his brave men were left in possession of the now ruinous citadel, thus preserving it for their country. The glory of their daring deeds has passed into a common saying. Of any one accomplishing a great deed, the people say: “He has won the fame of Erlau.” The place, nevertheless, passed under Turkish rule in 1596, its Hungarian commandant having been compelled by the foreign garrison to capitulate.
In 1566 Sultan Solyman, who, though old, was still full of vigor, placed himself at the head of a formidable army, and invaded Hungary for the sixth time, his object being to take Erlau and, eventually, to march against Vienna. On reaching, with his 200,000 men and 300 guns, Hungarian territory, he was met by the news that Mohammed Pasha, his favorite, together with his army, had been massacred by the Hungarians at Szigetvár. The aged sultan desired to avenge this affront at once. Szigetvár and its brave commander, Nicholas Zrinyi, had long since been troublesome to the Turks. Zrinyi, the scion of a most ancient family, had been engaged for years in constant fighting against the Moslem power, during those periods even when peace was officially established. His possessions and castles lay in the border territory, and the fearless man was ever at war with the Osmanlis, making them feel the weight of his irresistible sword. The storming of Szigetvár had been attempted once before, but the enemy had been beaten back with great slaughter. And now the great sultan determined himself to bring him to terms, and to invest in person the small fortress. Zrinyi was prepared for the worst, and calmly got ready to face the formidable foe. Szigetvár was not a fortress of the first rank, but only one of the minor strong places. The main feature of its strength was that it lay almost entirely surrounded by lake and marsh, the only road leading to the place being over the bridge communicating with the gate. In front of the citadel, on an island, was the old town, and south of it, on another island, the so-called new town. Szigetvár, therefore, consisted, in point of fact, of three places, each fortified, but differing from each other in the strength of their works of defence. The two towns were, in reality, advanced fortifications of the fortress itself. Without much aid from any quarter, Zrinyi undertook the defence of this small place. His own money purchased the necessary ammunition and military supplies; he filled the granaries with provisions, produced on his own estates, and from his cellar came the necessary wine. There was an abundance of provisions in the place, but there were not soldiers enough. When it became quite certain that the sultan was marching his whole army against Szigetvár, all Zrinyi could obtain from the king, after repeatedly urging his want of soldiers, was the permission to hire one thousand foot-soldiers. German soldiers, it is true, were offered to him, but those he did not want, preferring to select his troops from amongst the garrisons of his own castles, so as to have only tried men by his side. All the force he could muster to oppose to the hundreds of thousands of Solyman numbered, at the highest, 2,500 men. He had 54 guns and 800 hundredweights of gunpowder, and, what was worth more than all that, he and his men were inspired by the sublime resolve, rather to die on the field of honor than to submit to the cruel enemy, who had turned into a desert a large portion of their beautiful country. His soldiers worshipped their heroic leader, and enthusiastically pledged their devotion by oaths of fidelity and obedience.
On the 31st of July, 1566, the advance guard of the enemy showed itself. During the first few days several minor engagements took place, but the siege began in real earnest on the 7th of August. On that day the first assault was attempted; it was directed against the weakest point, the new town, but it met with no success. A few days later, however, Zrinyi himself deemed it expedient to give up the defence of this advanced position, and, after having set fire to the new town and reduced it to ashes, he abandoned it to the enemy. The besiegers immediately occupied it and erected their batteries, protected by bags and baskets filled with earth, and sacks of wool. The batteries were hardly ready when the Hungarians surprised them one night and destroyed them all. Chance, however, now favored the Turks. A drought had prevailed during two months, and the terrain surrounding the old town had become so dry, as considerably to facilitate the approach of the enemy. The besiegers attempted also to drain the lake surrounding the fortress, and planned to accomplish this by cutting through the great dam around it, so as to provide an outlet for the waters. The neighborhood of the dam became the scene of fierce struggles. The position was heroically defended by the Hungarians, while the Turks quite as heroically again and again returned to the attack. After a sanguinary contest lasting the whole day, the Turks finally took the old town on the 19th of August, and Zrinyi with his shrunken garrison entirely withdrew to the citadel, after having demolished the bridge leading to the old town.
Sultan Solyman, however, now thought that lives enough had been lost, and he therefore tried to get possession of the fortress by peaceable means. He tried Zrinyi with fair promises; he sent him messages that he would make him prince of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, and tempted him with treasures and estates. Then he tried him with threats. The enemy had captured one of the trumpeters of Zrinyi’s son, George. The trumpet found in the prisoner’s possession had the arms of the Zrinyi family painted on it, and Solyman sent this trumpet to Szigetvár as a token that Zrinyi’s son had been taken captive, and threatened that the prisoner would be cruelly executed unless the place was surrendered. Neither promises nor threats were of any avail. Zrinyi did not for a moment waver, but was steadfast in his determination to follow the dictates of duty and patriotism alone.
The wrath of Solyman at the wearisomeness of the siege knew no bounds. He had been patiently expecting day after day the reduction of the place, and finally, tired of further delay, gave the order for a general assault on the 29th of August. The superstitious sultan thought this a particularly lucky day, for it was the anniversary of the day on which he had taken Belgrade and of the battle at Mohács. The aged ruler, who now, but rarely showed himself to his soldiers, mounted his favorite charger and appeared amongst the Janissaries, in order to rouse and encourage them. His troops rushed enthusiastically into the fight, for which the artillery and the engineers conducting the siege had made every preparation many days before. But Zrinyi was ready and wide-awake, and drove the assailants back with great slaughter. Aliportug, a Portuguese renegade, who was the enemy’s most distinguished artillery officer and military engineer, and had conducted the siege of Sziget, lost his life during this engagement. The Hungarians, although they too had suffered severe losses, celebrated their triumph with bonfires and feasting. They now fondly hoped that their heroic resistance would at last induce the royal troops to come to the relief of Sziget, and to attack the exhausted troops of the sultan. Some negotiations to that effect had been carried on, but the result was as usual; the German commanders allowed the scanty garrison to perish.
The besiegers, after their last repulse, passed an entire week without renewing the attack. They employed this pause to lay unobserved a powerful mine under the walls of the bastion, which was fired by them on the 5th of September. The explosion shattered the walls, the bastion fell down, and a terrible gale carried the flames into the citadel in every direction. All the buildings were soon on fire, and the Turks too began a general assault. Hemmed in by the dreadful conflagration and the storming enemy, the Hungarians finally yielded. They retired from the outer fortification, and Zrinyi with his men—who had dwindled down to a few hundred—withdrew into the inner or smaller fort. Further resistance seemed now hopeless, yet Zrinyi did not think of capitulating. The cannon-balls of the enemy set on fire the smaller fort on the 7th of September. Zrinyi, in this extremity, had all his valuables, his thousands of gold and silver, his precious vessels and plate, brought into the public square of the citadel and cast into the flames. He then divested himself of his armor and helmet, donned a dolmány (a short jacket braided in front), and threw over it a dark-blue velvet cloak, placing in each of his pockets a hundred ducats as a reward to the man who should discover his dead body. He wound a costly chain of gold around his neck, in place of his helmet he put on his head a kalpag (a Hungarian fur cap), ornamented with a heron’s feather and diamond rosettes, and, arming himself with a curved sabre and a light shield, he took with him the keys of the citadel, to make sure that they should pass into the enemy’s hands only upon his death. In this attire he appeared before his men, who were assembled in the courtyard. He addressed them in a speech full of his generous spirit, “lauding them for their gallant conduct, which would earn for them the respect of the Christian world and of generations to come. The conclusion of their heroic career,” he added, “ought to be worthy of their brilliant feats of the past. There is but one road before us,” he continued, “that of honor; all the other courses are those of shame. You must either meet with death here amid the flames, or must sally forth, and, dearly selling your lives, die the deaths of heroes. Choose between the two.” The kindling words of their leader did not fail of their effect. At this supreme moment the people of Szigetvár, in their exalted enthusiasm, thought only of their honor. The very women wished to follow the men on this their last journey. Zrinyi had the bridge lowered and was the first to advance upon it. Lawrence Juranics was at his side carrying the large banner, and the other officers promptly followed. About six hundred people joined the sally of their heroic leader, who, after a fierce struggle, laid down his devoted life. Of his companions-in-arms but few escaped.[*]
Thus, after a glorious resistance of over six weeks, did Szigetvár fall into the hands of the Turks. Sultan Solyman did not see the victorious end of the siege; he had expired a few days before in his camp. The Turkish army returned home, and thus through Zrinyi’s noble self-sacrifice was the entire campaign of the enemy rendered barren of results. The formidable army which had menaced the whole country wasted its strength at Szigetvár, and the capture of this fortress alone cost the enemy 30,000 lives. Zrinyi’s heroic death roused the admiration and sympathy of the whole European world, and his name became famous as one of the martyrs of Christianity.