That World War I commenced on July 28, 1914 is a well-known fact. It is also well known that Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. The other European powers, Germany, Russia, France, Belgium, England, Italy and Turkey were soon drawn into the war.
Many know that the incident which led to this mighty conflagration was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914.
But who was the archduke, and what was he doing in Sarajevo? We may also know that the assassin was one Gavrilo Princip.
Why did he do the deed in Sarajevo? And why did this assassination start the World War? Sixteen years earlier, in 1898 the Empress of Austria-Hungary, Elisabeth, had been assassinated in Switzerland by an Italian citizen. Her assassination did not result in war.
Let me relate the stories of the archduke and that of his assassin, Gavrilo Princip.
In 1914, the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was Franz Joseph. His son, Rudolph, committed suicide in 1889, so the emperor’s nephew, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, became heir to the throne of the empire.
The emperor and Franz Ferdinand did not get on. The emperor insisted that Franz Ferdinand marry a woman from a ruling European royal family. Franz Ferdinand refused. Instead, he married Sophie Chotek, the daughter of an archduke, Count Chotek of Chotkow and Wognin.
The emperor decreed that Sophie’s children could not inherit the throne of the empire. Although Sophie was given the title of princess, she was not allowed to be near her husband on royal and state events. The couple had four children, one of whom died at birth.
Franz Ferdinand and Sophie lived a life of complete luxury and privilege. He was a known hunter and boasted that he had shot over 270 000 animals. Of these, 3 000 are still on display in Austria and Hungary. It is alleged that in one day, he shot 2 098 animals. He travelled all over the world in search of animals to shoot.
He had been invited to Sarajevo to view military manoeuvres and to hand out medals in the city hall on June 28, 1914. He accepted this invitation. As it was a military occasion, he would be allowed to be accompanied by his wife, Princess Sophie. Military manoeuvres were not a royal or state event.
They travelled by train from Vienna to Sarajevo. Disembarking at 10am, they took their places in the second car in a convoy of six vehicles.
Crowds lined the route through the city as they steadily drove in the 28 horsepower Gräf & Stift open-topped vehicle (see picture). On the way waited Gavrilo Princip and his band of would-be assassins.
Gavrilo Princip was 19 years of age on June 28, 1914. He was a Serb born in Bosnia. Serbia had become independent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but its province of Bosnia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Thousands of Serbs in Serbia and Bosnia, and in many other Balkan states, including Croatia, wanted a new, united country free of the hated Austria-Hungary. They saw the empire as their oppressor.
Gavrilo was a little chap and quite sickly. He contracted tuberculosis at an early age. His father was a peasant farmer who carried mail and goods between villages to earn extra money. They were dirt poor. Of the nine children born to Mrs Princip, only three survived, including Gavrilo.
Something compelled Gavrilo to leave the farm and to attend school in Sarajevo, and later Belgrade. By all accounts he did very well at school, but dropped out because he simply did not have the money to continue. At school he learnt about Serbian nationalism and interacted with radical Serbian youth.
He loved reading. He read any book he could get his hands on. He read mainly what we would now call freedom liberation literature. He tried to join the Serbian guerrillas fighting the Turks, but was rejected because of his size.
He had a strong desire to do something significant, something important which would precipitate Bosnia moving away from the empire. He decided to assassinate any important political figure.
On hearing that the archduke was to visit Sarajevo, he hatched the plot to kill the archduke. With strong leadership skills, he recruited several fellow Serbs to help him. He arranged for pistols, grenades and bombs for him and his fellow conspirators. The conspirators were placed along the archduke’s route. Each was armed with a bomb or pistol.
The first two had cold feet and did nothing as the Gräf & Stift drove past. At 10.10am, the third-placed assassin, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, had the courage to throw his bomb at the car. The driver saw it hurtling towards him and accelerated. The bomb bounced off the folded top. As the bomb had a 10-second delay, it exploded under the fourth car, injuring the two occupants and 12 bystanders.
The Gräf & Stift sped on and the archduke and princess Sophie arrived safely at the city hall. After the medal ceremony they were driven back to the station. On the way the archduke decided to visit his two injured aids in the Sarajevo hospital.
No one told the driver of this decision, and he travelled the same route back to the station. When told to stop and change direction to the hospital, the driver had to reverse along the narrow Franz Joseph street. He stalled the car outside the Cafe Moritz Schiller. And who was standing outside the cafe? That’s right, little Gavrilo Princip.
Probably thinking carpe diem, he pulled out his .38 calibre FN 1910 pistol and stepped into the road. He shot princess Sophie first, in the stomach, and then shot the archduke in the neck. Both were dead within 30 minutes.
All the assassins, except one, were arrested. All were charged with high treason and being accomplices to treason. Gavrilo never denied what he had done. He maintained he was not guilty of treason. The verbatim record of the trial is still available.
At his trial, Gavrilo was asked by the prosecutor:
“Do you consider yourself guilty?”
To which he replied:
“I am not a criminal, because I destroyed that which was evil. I think that I am good.”
Prosecutor: “And what about her?”
Gavrilo: “I did not wish to kill her, I killed her accidentally.”
Prosecutor: “So you do not consider yourself guilty?”
Gavrilo: “No.”
The powers in Vienna (the capital of the empire) had been waiting for an excuse to take over Serbia.
They blamed Serbia for the assassination.
They gave Serbia an ultimatum to hand over to the Austro-Hungarian authorities all those involved in the assassination. Serbia refused.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. The other European countries soon followed and World War I engulfed Europe.
After the war the Austro-Hungarian royal family was no more – Austria and Hungary separated and became republics.
Gavrilo and his conspirators were all found guilty. Only one was hanged. The others received lengthy prison sentences. Gavrilo was sentenced to 20 years. Four years later, his TB had spread to his bones. His arm was amputated. He died in prison on April 28, 1918.
In many countries in the Balkans he is regarded as a hero, a freedom fighter. In others he is seen as a villain, a terrorist. In Belgrade there is a street named after him.
Hero or villain, his one act changed the world dramatically and led to both WW I and WW II. Fifty million people died in the two wars.
In some sense it is a repeat of the story of David and Goliath. The poor little kid from the wrong side of town against the posh kid from the privileged class.
Unfortunately, both kids and the world lost.
* Owen is a part-time lecturer at the Graduate School of Business at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. As a writer he has contributed stories to the books, South Africa – The Good News, Miracles that are Changing a Nation and South Africa @20 for Better or for Worse?