Thread by @marinamaral2

On this day in 1914, in 1914, Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated in Sarajevo. Within 30 days, World War I would begin.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, leave Sarajevo City Hall on June 28, 1914, shortly before they were killed.

Are you ready for a huge thread?

Under the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman Vilayet of Bosnia, while the Ottoman Empire retained official sovereignty.

Under this same treaty, the Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, the United Kingdom, France, the German Empire, Italy, and the Russian Empire) gave official recognition to the Principality of Serbia as a fully sovereign state, which four years later transformed into a kingdom...

under Prince Milan IV Obrenović who thus became King Milan I of Serbia. Serbia's monarchs, at the time from the royal House of Obrenović that maintained close relations with Austria-Hungary, were content to reign within the borders set by the treaty.

This changed in May 1903, when Serbian military officers led by Dragutin Dimitrijević stormed the Serbian Royal Palace. After a fierce battle in the dark, the attackers captured General Laza Petrović, head of the Palace Guard....

... and forced him to reveal the hiding place of King Alexander I Obrenović and his wife Queen Draga. The King and Queen opened the door from their hiding place.

The King was shot thirty times; the Queen eighteen. The royal corpses were then stripped and brutally sabred, and threw out of a palace window, ending any threat that loyalists would mount a counterattack.

General Petrović was then killed too. The conspirators installed Peter I of the House of Karađorđević as the new king.

The new dynasty was more nationalist, friendlier to Russia and less friendly to Austria-Hungary. Over the next decade, disputes between Serbia and its neighbors erupted, as Serbia moved to build its power and gradually reclaim its 14th-century empire.

These conflicts included a customs dispute with Austria-Hungary beginning in 1906; the Bosnian crisis of 1908–1909, and finally the two Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Serbia conquered Macedonia and Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire and drove out Bulgaria.

Serbia's military successes and Serbian outrage over the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina emboldened Serbian nationalists in Serbia and Serbs in Austria-Hungary who chafed under the Austro-Hungarian rule...

... and whose nationalist sentiments were stirred by Serb "cultural" organizations. In the five years leading up to 1914, lone assassins – mostly Serb citizens of Austria-Hungary – made a series of unsuccessful assassination attempts in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina..

... against Austro-Hungarian officials. The assassins received sporadic support from Serbia.

On 15 June 1910, Bogdan Žerajić attempted to kill the iron-fisted Governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Marijan Varešanin. Žerajić was a 22-year-old Orthodox Serb from Nevesinje, Herzegovina, who was a student at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb

The five bullets Žerajić fired at Varešanin and the fatal bullet he put in his own brain made Žerajić an inspiration to future assassins, including Princip and Princip's accomplice Čabrinović.

Princip said that Žerajić "was my first model. When I was seventeen I passed whole nights at his grave, reflecting on our wretched condition and thinking of him. It is there that I made up my mind sooner or later to perpetrate an outrage."

In 1913, Emperor Franz Joseph commanded Archduke Franz Ferdinand to observe the military maneuvers in Bosnia scheduled for June 1914. Following the maneuvers, Ferdinand and his wife planned to visit Sarajevo to open the state museum in its new premises there.

Duchess Sophie, according to their eldest son, Duke Maximilian, accompanied her husband out of fear for his safety.

As Sophie, although of high aristocratic birth, was not from a dynastic family. Emperor Franz Joseph had only consented to their marriage on the condition that their descendants would never ascend the throne. The 14th anniversary of their marriage fell on 28 June.

Franz Ferdinand was an advocate of increased federalism and widely believed to favor trialism, under which Austria-Hungary would be reorganized by combining the Slavic lands within the Austro-Hungarian empire into a third crown.

A Slavic kingdom could have been a bulwark against Serb irredentism, and Franz Ferdinand was therefore perceived as a threat by those same irredentists. Princip later stated to the court that preventing Franz Ferdinand's planned reforms was one of his motivations.

Danilo Ilić was a Bosnian Orthodox Serb. He had worked as a school teacher and as a bank worker but in 1913 and 1914 he lived with, and outwardly off, his mother, who operated a small boarding house in Sarajevo.

Secretly, Ilić was leader of the Serbian-irredentist Black Hand cell in Sarajevo. In late 1913, he came to the Serbian listening post at Užice to speak to the officer in charge, Serbian Colonel C. A. Popović, who was a captain at the time and a member of the Black Hand.

Ilić recommended an end to the period of revolutionary organization building and a move to direct action against Austria-Hungary. Popović passed Danilo Ilić on to Belgrade to discuss this matter with Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević.

By 1913, Apis and his fellow military conspirators (drawn heavily from the ranks of the May 1903 coup) had come to dominate what was left of the Black Hand.

There are no reports as to what took place between Ilić and Apis (Dragutin Dimitrijević), but soon after their meeting, Apis's righthand man and fellow Black Hander, Serbian Major Vojislav Tankosić, who by this time was in charge of guerrilla training...

called a Serbian irredentist planning meeting in Toulouse, France. Amongst those summoned to the Toulouse meeting was Muhamed Mehmedbašić, a carpenter by trade and son of an impoverished Muslim noble from Herzegovina.

He too was a member of the Black Hand. Mehmedbašić was (here quoting Albertini paraphrasing Mehmedbašić) "eager to carry out an act of terrorism to revive the revolutionary spirit of Bosnia."

During this January 1914 meeting, various possible Austro-Hungarian targets for assassination were discussed, including Franz Ferdinand. However, the participants decided only to dispatch Mehmed Mehmedbašić to Sarajevo, to kill the Governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek.

While Mehmedbašić was traveling to Bosnia-Herzegovina from France, police searched his train for a thief. Thinking the police might be after him, he threw his weapons out the train window. Once he arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina he had to set about looking for replacement weapons.

The search for new weapons delayed Mehmedbašić's attempt on Potiorek. Before Mehmedbašić was ready to act, Ilić summoned him to Mostar.

On 26 March 1914, Ilić informed Mehmedbašić that Belgrade had scrapped the mission to kill the governor.

The plan now was to murder Franz Ferdinand.

The assassination was planned with the knowledge and approval of the Russian ambassador in Belgrade Nikolai Hartwig and the Russian military attache in Belgrade Viktor Artamonov.

Ilić recruited the Serbian youths Vaso Čubrilović and Cvjetko Popović shortly after Easter (Orthodox Easter as given by Dedijer: 19 April 1914), for the assassination, as evidenced by the testimony of Ilić, Čubrilović, and Popović at the Sarajevo trial.

Three youths – Trifko Grabež, Nedeljko Čabrinović e Gavrilo Princip – Bosnian Serb subjects of Austria-Hungary, living in Belgrade, testified at the Sarajevo trial that at about the same time (a little after Easter), they were eager to carry out an assassination

and approached a fellow Bosnian Serb and former guerrilla fighter known to be well connected and with access to arms, Milan Ciganović, and through him Major Tankosić and reached an agreement to transport arms to Sarajevo and participate in the assassination.

Agreement in principle was quickly reached, but delivery of the weapons was delayed for more than a month. The assassins would meet with Ciganović and he would put them off. At one point, Ciganović told Grabež:

"Nothing doing, the old Emperor is ill and the Heir Apparent [sic] will not go to Bosnia."

When Emperor Franz Joseph's health recovered the operation was a "go" again.

Tankosić gave the assassins one FN Model 1910 pistol. They practiced shooting a few rounds of scarce and expensive .380 ACP pistol ammunition in a park near Belgrade.

The rest of the weapons were finally delivered on 26 May. The three assassins from Belgrade testified that Major Tankosić, directly and through Ciganović, not only provided six hand grenades and four new Browning FN Model 1910 automatic pistols with .380 ACP ammunition...

... but also money, suicide pills, training, a special map with the location of gendarmes marked, knowledge of contacts on a clandestine tunnel used to infiltrate agents and arms into Austria-Hungary, and a small card authorizing the use of that tunnel.

Major Tankosić confirmed to the journalist and historian Luciano Magrini that he provided the bombs and pistols and was responsible for training Princip, Grabež, and Čabrinović and that he (Tankosić) initiated the idea of the suicide pills.

Princip, Grabež, and Čabrinović left Belgrade by boat on 28 May and traveled along the Sava River to Šabac where they handed the small card to Captain Popović of the Serbian Border Guard.

Popović, in turn, provided them with a letter to Serbian Captain Prvanović, and filled out a form with the names of three customs officials whose identities they could assume and thereby receive discounted train tickets for the ride to Loznica, a small border town.

When Princip, Grabež, and Čabrinović reached Loznica on 29 May, Captain Prvanović summoned three of his revenue sergeants to discuss the best way to cross the border undetected.

While waiting for the sergeants to arrive, Princip and Grabež had a falling out with Čabrinović over Čabrinović's repeated violations of operational security. Čabrinović handed over the weapons he was carrying to Princip and Grabež.

Princip told Čabrinović to go alone to Zvornik, make an official crossing there using Grabež's ID card and then go on to Tuzla and link back up.

On the morning of 30 May Prvanović's revenue sergeants assembled and Sergeant Budivoj Grbić accepted the task and led Princip and Grabež by foot to Isaković's Island, a small island in the middle of the Drina River that separated Serbia from Bosnia.

They reached the island on 31 May. Grbić passed the terrorists and their weapons to the agents of the Serbian Narodna Odbrana for transport into Austro-Hungarian territory and from safe-house to safe-house. Princip and Grabež crossed into Austria-Hungary on the evening of 1 June.

Princip and Grabež and the weapons were passed from agent to agent until on 3 June they arrived in Tuzla. They left the weapons in the hands of the Narodna Odbrana agent Miško Jovanović and rejoined Čabrinović.

The Narodna Odbrana agents reported their activities to the Narodna Odbrana President, Boža Janković, who in turn reported to the then Serbian Caretaker Prime Minister Nikola Pašić. The report to Pašić added the name of a new military conspirator, Serbian Major Kosta Todorović.

Pašić's handwritten notes from the briefing (estimated by Dedijer to have taken place on 5 June) included the nickname of one of the assassins ("Trifko" Grabež) and also the name of Major Tankosić.

The Austrians later captured the report, Pašić's handwritten notes, and additional corroborating documents.

Čabrinović's father was a Sarajevo police official. In Tuzla, Čabrinović bumped into one of his father's friends, Sarajevo Police Detective Ivan Vila, and...

... struck up a conversation. By coincidence, Princip, Grabež and Čabrinović boarded the same train for Sarajevo as Detective Vila. Čabrinović inquired of the detective the date of Franz Ferdinand's visit to Sarajevo.

The next morning, Čabrinović passed on the news to his fellow assassins that the assassination would be on 28 June.

On arriving in Sarajevo on 4 June, Princip, Grabež, and Čabrinović went their separate ways. Princip checked in with Ilić, visited his family in Hadžici and returned on 6 June taking up residence at Ilić's mother's house. Grabež joined his family in Pale.

Čabrinović moved back into his father's house in Sarajevo.

On 14 June, Ilić went to Tuzla to bring the weapons to Sarajevo. Miško Jovanović hid the weapons in a large box of sugar.

On 15 June, the two went separately by train to Doboj where Jovanović handed off the box to Ilić. Later that day, Ilić returned to Sarajevo by train, being careful to transfer to a local train outside Sarajevo and then quickly transfer to a tram to avoid police detection.

Once at his mother's house, Ilić hid the weapons in a suitcase under a sofa. Then, on approximately 17 June, he traveled to Brod.

Questioned at trial, Ilić gave a confused explanation of the reason for his trip, first saying he had gone to Brod to prevent the assassination and then saying he had returned to Sarajevo from Brod to prevent the assassination.

Dedijer puts forward the thesis (citing Bogijević) that Ilić went to Brod to meet an emissary of Apis, Djuro Ŝarac, who had instructions to cancel the assassination and then later Rade Malobabić was dispatched from Serbia to Sarajevo to reauthorize the assassination.

Ilić began handing out the weapons on 27 June. Until 27 June he had kept the identities of the assassins from Belgrade secret from those he had recruited locally and vice versa.

Then, that night, as Mehmedbašić told Albertini: "On the eve of the outrage Ilić introduced me to Princip in a Sarajevo café with the words 'Mehmedbašić who to-morrow is to be with us.'"

The following morning, on 28 June 1914, Ilić positioned the six assassins along the motorcade route. Ilić walked the street, exhorting the assassins to bravery.

On the morning of 28 June 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his party proceeded by train from Ilidža Spa to Sarajevo. Governor Oskar Potiorek met the party at Sarajevo station. Six automobiles were waiting.

By mistake, three local police officers got into the first car with the chief officer of special security; the special security officers who were supposed to accompany their chief got left behind. The second car carried the Mayor and the Chief of Police of Sarajevo.

The third car in the motorcade was a Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS open sports car with its top folded down. Franz Ferdinand, Sophie, Governor Potiorek, and Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach rode in this car.

Security arrangements within Sarajevo were limited. The local military commander, General Michael von Appel, proposed that troops line the intended route but was told that this would offend the loyal citizenry.

Protection for the visiting party was accordingly left to the Sarajevo police, of whom only about 60 were on duty on the Sunday of the visit.

The motorcade passed the first assassin, Mehmedbašić. Danilo Ilić had placed him in front of the garden of the Mostar Cafe and armed him with a bomb. Mehmedbašić failed to act.

Ilić had placed Vaso Čubrilović next to Mehmedbašić, arming him with a pistol and a bomb. He failed to act.

Further along the route, Ilić had placed Nedeljko Čabrinović on the opposite side of the street near the Miljacka River, arming him with a bomb. At 10:10 am, Franz Ferdinand's car approached and Čabrinović threw his bomb.

The bomb bounced off the folded back convertible cover into the street. The bomb's timed detonator caused it to explode under the next car, putting that car out of action, leaving a 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m), 6.5-inch-deep (170 mm) crater, and wounding 16–20 people.

Čabrinović swallowed his cyanide pill and jumped into the Miljacka river. Čabrinović's suicide attempt failed, as the old cyanide only induced vomiting, and the Miljacka was only 13 cm deep due to the hot, dry summer.

Police dragged Čabrinović out of the river, and he was severely beaten by the crowd before being taken into custody.

The procession sped away towards the Town Hall leaving the disabled car behind. Cvjetko Popović, Gavrilo Princip, and Trifun Grabež failed to act as the motorcade passed them at high speed.

Arriving at the Town Hall for a scheduled reception, Franz Ferdinand showed understandable signs of stress, interrupting a prepared speech of welcome by Mayor Fehim Curčić to protest: "Mr. Mayor, I came here on a visit and I am greeted with bombs. It is outrageous."

Duchess Sophie then whispered into Franz Ferdinand's ear, and after a pause, Franz Ferdinand said to the mayor: "Now you may speak." He then became calm and the mayor gave his speech.

Franz Ferdinand had to wait as his own speech, still wet with blood from being in the damaged car, was brought to him. To the prepared text he added a few remarks about the day's events thanking the people of Sarajevo for...

... their ovations "as I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination."

Officials and members of the Archduke's party discussed what to do next. The archduke's chamberlain, Baron Rumerskirch, proposed that the couple remain at the Town Hall until troops could be brought into the city to line the streets.

Governor-General Oskar Potiorek vetoed this suggestion on the grounds that soldiers coming straight from maneuvers would not have the dress uniforms appropriate for such duties. "Do you think that Sarajevo is full of assassins?" he concluded.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie gave up their planned program in favor of visiting the wounded from the bombing, at the hospital. Count Harrach took up a protective position on the left-hand running board of Franz Ferdinand's car.

At 10:45 a.m., Franz Ferdinand and Sophie got back into the motorcade, once again in the third car.

In order to avoid the city center, General Oskar Potiorek decided that the royal car should travel straight along the Appel Quay to the Sarajevo Hospital. However, the driver, Leopold Lojka, took a right turn into Franz Josef Street.

The reason for this is that Potiorek's aide Eric(h) von Merrizzi was in the hospital, and was therefore unable to give Lojka the information about the change in plans and the driving route.

The Sarajevo Chief of Police Edmund Gerde (who had earlier repeatedly protested about the lack of security precautions for the visit) was asked to tell the drivers of the new route but in the confusion and tensions of the moment neglected to do so.

After learning that the first assassination attempt had been unsuccessful, Princip thought about a position to assassinate the Archduke on his return journey, and decided to move to a position in front of a nearby food shop (Schiller's delicatessen), near the Latin Bridge.

At this point the Archdukes' motorcade turned off the Appel Quay, mistakenly following the original route which would have taken them to the National Museum.

Governor Potiorek, who was sharing the second vehicle with the Imperial couple, called out to the driver to reverse and take the Quay to the hospital.

Driver Lojka stopped the car close to where Princip was standing, prior to backing up.

The latter stepped forward and fired two shots from a distance of about one and a half meters (4.9 feet) using a Belgian-made 9×17mm (.380 ACP) Fabrique Nationale model 1910 semi-automatic pistol.

The first bullet wounded the Archduke in the jugular vein, the second inflicted an abdominal wound on the Duchess.

(The photo was taken from a documentary).

Princip was immediately arrested. At his sentencing, he stated that his intention had been to kill Governor Potiorek, rather than Sophie.

Both victims remained seated upright, but died while being driven to the Governor's residence for medical treatment.

As reported by Count Harrach, Franz Ferdinand's last words were "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!"

Followed by six utterances of "It is nothing," in response to Harrach's inquiry as to Franz Ferdinand's injury. These utterances were followed by a long death rattle. Sophie was dead on arrival at the Governor's residence. Franz Ferdinand died 10 minutes later.

(Original jacket)

The bodies were transported to Trieste by the battleship SMS Viribus Unitis and then to Vienna by special train. Even though most foreign royalties had planned to attend, they were pointedly disinvited and the funeral was just the immediate imperial family.

The dead couple's three children were excluded from the few public ceremonies. The officer corps was forbidden to salute the funeral train, and this led to a minor revolt led by Archduke Karl, the new heir presumptive.

The public viewing of the coffins was curtailed severely and even more scandalously, Montenuovo tried unsuccessfully to make the children foot the bill. The Archduke and Duchess were interred at Artstetten Castle because the Duchess could not be buried in the Imperial Crypt.

All of the assassins were eventually caught. Those in Austro-Hungarian custody were tried together with members of the infiltration route who had helped deliver them and their weapons to Sarajevo.

Mehmedbašić was arrested in Montenegro, but was allowed to "escape" to Serbia where he joined Major Tankosić's auxiliaries, but in 1916 Serbia imprisoned him on other false charges.

Anti-Serb rioting broke out in Sarajevo and various other places within Austria-Hungary in the hours following the assassination until order was restored by the military.

On the night of the assassination, country-wide anti-Serb pogroms and demonstrations were also organized in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly on the territory of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

The following day, anti-Serb demonstrations in Sarajevo became more violent and could be characterized as a pogrom. The police and local authorities in the city did nothing to prevent anti-Serb violence.

Writer Ivo Andrić referred to the violence in Sarajevo as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate." Two Serbs were killed on the first day of pogrom, many were attacked, while around 1,000 houses, shops, schools and institutions (such as banks, hotels) owned by Serbs were razed or pillaged.

The top count in the indictments was conspiracy to commit high treason involving official circles in the Kingdom of Serbia. Conspiracy to commit high treason carried a maximum sentence of death which conspiracy to commit simple murder did not.

The trial was held from 12 October to 23 October with the verdict and sentences announced on 28 October 1914.

Princip stated: "I am a Yugoslav nationalist and I believe in unification of all South Slavs in whatever form of state and that it be free of Austria." Princip was then asked how he intended to realize his goal and responded: "By means of terror."

Prison terms, death sentences and acquittals were as follows

At trial Čabrinović had expressed his regrets for the murders. Following sentencing, Čabrinović received a letter of complete forgiveness from the three young children the assassins had orphaned.

Čabrinović and Princip died of tuberculosis in prison. Those under the age of 20 years at the time of the crime could receive a maximum sentence of 20 years under the Austrian-Hungarian law.

1915: Veljko Cubrilovic, Danilo Ilic and Misko Jovanovic.

On 23 May Apis and eight of his associates were sentenced to death; two others were sentenced to 15 years in prison. One defendant died during the trial and the charges against him were dropped. The Serbian High Court reduced the number of death sentences to seven.

Regent Alexander commuted four of the remaining death sentences, leaving just three death sentences in place. Amongst those tried, four of the defendants had confessed their roles in Sarajevo and their final sentences were as follows

Indictees at the Salonika trial, after the verdict

30 days after the assassination, World War I began.

*Done*