Istanbul's Fall, 1587

What if we could go back and re-make history? What if Sigismund II, the last king of Poland/Grand Duke of Lithuania, had not died childless in 1572, but had produced an heir: Casimir V? What if, carried away with zeal, he mustered the forces of European Christendom to mount a new crusade to re-capture Constantinople, lost to the Moslem Ottomans in 1453? Meet his childhood friend and skeptical chancellor Jan Zamoyski, and Fr. Peter Skarga, SJ, who started it all with his visions. Meet the magnate Michael Radziwill, who, under cover of supporting the crusade, is working against it, with an Ottoman guarantee of setting up his own state in Moldova. Meet the 1400-pound Sultan Murad III and his confused grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha: carried away from Christian Bulgaria as a boy, turned into a janissary, and, altho secretly Christian, working against the Crusade. Journey with the vast army from Krakow, thru Chocim and Adrianople, then finally as they besiege the city's Theodosian Walls. Be present when Hagia Sophia is re-dedicated by a re-united Christendom of Catholic and Orthodox worshippers.