Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 after the driver took a wrong turning. The date was Vidovdan, the anniversary of the Serbian defeat at Kosovo in 1389, and the visit was an inspection of manoeuvres in a province Austria-Hungary had annexed in 1908 against Serbian objection. The conspirators were six young men, mostly Bosnian Serbs, armed and trained by officers of Serbian military intelligence connected to the Black Hand. The morning went badly for them. Two did nothing, one threw a bomb that bounced off the folded roof of the car and wounded officers behind, and the archduke went on to the town hall and complained about being welcomed with bombs. He then decided to visit the wounded in hospital, and nobody told the lead driver the route had changed. The car turned into Franz Josef Street, was told to reverse, and stalled in front of a delicatessen where Princip happened to be standing. He fired twice from about a metre and a half. Sophie was hit in the abdomen and Franz Ferdinand in the neck, and his last recorded words were to her, asking her not to die and to live for their children. Princip was nineteen and too young to be executed, and died of tuberculosis in prison in 1918. Austria took a month to act, and by August most of Europe was at war. The archduke was also the strongest advocate in Vienna of conciliating the Slavs by giving them a third crown alongside the Austrians and Hungarians, which is precisely why the conspirators chose him. The one man who might have reformed the empire was killed to prevent the reform.
- Year: 1914 CE
- Category: Political
