Hrvojka Mihanovic Salopek presenting Croatian Mariological Heritage of the Varazdin Bishopric

Nikola Zrinski Junior (1620-1664), a Croatian statesman and writer, described in his epic “The siege of Siget” the heroic death of his grandfather Nikola Subic Zrinski in 1566, which entered all the historical annals of the 16th century. With his 2500 brave soldiers, mostly Croats, he was defending the fortress of Sziget in southern Hungary against 90,000 Turks.

The Turkish troops were under the sultan Sulejman the Great and supplied by 300 cannons. It took them a month to defeat the Croatian soldiers, who all died a terrible death in the final battle. Despite his promise, the King Maximillian Habsburg did not help Nikola Subic Zrinski. Historians say that the Turks had almost 30,000 dead.

Cardinal Richelieu, the famous French minister at the court of King Lui XIII, wrote the following: A miracle was necessary for the Habsburg Empire to survive. And the miracle happened in Sziget. The above mentioned epic was written in the Hungarian language. Though written by the Croat, it is regarded to be one of the greatest achievements of the early Hungarian literature. See also here (in Croatian).

Nikola Subic Zrinski, his oath taken in Siget in 1566., and his original signature in the Glagolitic script.

Ivan Zajc has composed the opera Nikola Subic Zrinski, which is very popular in Japan, especially its tune “U boj, u boj!” (on this web page you can listen to a Japanese choir singing this song in Croatian!).

• It is worth noting that Dominko Zlataric, famous 16th century Croatian writer in Dubrovnik, dedicated some of his translations from Greek classics to Juraj Zrinski, son of the above mentioned Sziget hero Nikola Subic Zrinski. Zlataric stated that he translated Greek verses into Croatian (“u hrvatski izlozene”).
• In 1660 a Dutch scientist Jakov Tollins payed a visit to Nikola Zrinski Junior in Cakovec, and was impressed by his huge library (now a part of the National Library in Zagreb). Besides his native Croatian, Nikola Zrinski Jr read Hungarian, German, Latin, Italian and Turkish perfectly, and he was not stranger to French and Spanish.

Among innumerably many Croatian captives in Turkish slavery, there were at least two that deserve special attention:

• Bartol Gyurieuvits (Bartol Jurjevic, Gjurgjevic), 16th century, who left us extremely interesting testimonies about the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, that can be found in various libraries of almost all larger European cities;
• Juraj Hus (Husti), 16th century, who became Turkish military trumpeter.

It is not widely known that in the 16th century the town of Bihac was Croatian capital. Hasan-pasa Predojevic, an islamized Croat, occupied Bihac in 1592. About 2000 people were killed and 800 Croatian children taken to slavery and educated in the spirit of Islam. A real turning point which meant the beginning of the fall of the Ottoman expansion to Croatian historical lands (and to Europe) was a defeat of Hasan-pasa Predojevic in a battle at Sisak near Zagreb in 1593, which echoed in the whole of Europe.

Source www.croatianhistory.net