Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

• 1. Introduction

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  The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, took place in Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914. Within weeks it looked far too small to explain what came after it. In August 1914, the magazine The Independent surveyed a world in disarray. Global finance was in chaos and international trade was suspended. Industries were demoralized and families ruined. Millions of men in Europe had taken up arms to slaughter one another. The magazine called the killing a "deplorable but relatively insignificant" reason for all of it. It wrote: "It may be doubted whether the Archduke is worth all this carnage." So who were the young men who set out to kill him, and what drove them? Who handed them pistols and bombs, and how did those weapons cross a guarded border? Why was a royal motorcade left so lightly protected? Who truly gave the order, when the trials that judged the case were themselves later doubted? And how did a pair of pistol shots in a provincial capital become a war that drew in nearly every Great Power?

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• 2. Roots of Rage

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  The Treaty of Berlin in 1878 gave Austria-Hungary the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman province of Bosnia, while the Ottoman Empire kept formal sovereignty. The same treaty recognized Serbia as a fully sovereign state. Serbia's rulers came from the House of Obrenović, which kept close relations with Vienna. They were content to reign within the borders the treaty had set.

  That calm ended in May 1903. Royal Serbian Army officers led by Dragutin Dimitrijević stormed the Serbian Royal Palace and fought their way through the dark. They captured General Lazar Petrović, head of the Palace Guard, and forced him to reveal where King Alexander I Obrenović and Queen Draga were hiding. The king was shot thirty times and the queen eighteen. MacKenzie writes that "the royal corpses were then stripped and brutally sabred." The bodies were thrown from a palace window. Vojislav Tankosić organized the murders of Queen Draga's brothers, and General Petrović was killed as well. The conspirators installed Peter I of the House of Karađorđević as king.

  The new dynasty was more nationalist and friendlier to Russia, and it was less friendly to Austria-Hungary. A decade of quarrels followed as Serbia worked to build its power. A customs dispute with Austria-Hungary began in 1906 and is commonly called the Pig War. In the Bosnian crisis of 1908-1909, Serbia protested Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then gave way in March 1909 without compensation. In the two Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, Serbia took Macedonia and Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire and drove out Bulgaria. These military successes, together with outrage over the annexation, emboldened nationalists in Serbia and Serbs inside Bosnia who chafed under Habsburg rule.

  On the 8th of October 1908, a nationalist society called Narodna Odbrana was formed in Belgrade on the initiative of Milovan Milovanović. Behind a screen of cultural activities, it worked to undermine the loyalty of Bosnian Serbs to the Habsburg regime. Inside Bosnia and Herzegovina, local revolutionary groups became known together as Young Bosnia. Their goal was to end Austro-Hungarian colonial rule and unite all South Slavs. In the five years before 1914, lone assassins, mostly Serb citizens of Austria-Hungary, made a string of failed attempts on officials in Croatia-Slavonia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

  One of those attempts became a legend. On the 3rd of June 1910, Bogdan Žerajić, a 22-year-old Bosnian Serb from Nevesinje and a law student at the University of Zagreb, tried to kill General Marijan Varešanin, the Austrian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Žerajić fired five bullets at the governor and put the last into his own brain. The general survived and went on to crush the last Bosnian peasant uprising in the second half of 1910. Princip would later say 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 May 1911, key members of Narodna Odbrana, including Dimitrijević and Tankosić, founded the Black Hand. It was a secret society dedicated to a Greater Serbia through "terrorist action." The networks of both groups penetrated Young Bosnia to some extent. The Young Bosnians differed in holding that social revolution must accompany national liberation. Although mostly Serb, the movement also drew an important minority of Croats and some Muslims. In the spring of 1912, in a plot involving Young Bosnians, a Bosnian Croat student named Luka Jukić tried to assassinate the Governor of Croatia, Count Slavko Cuvaj.

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• 3. A Fatal Anniversary

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  In 1913, Emperor Franz Joseph commanded Franz Ferdinand to observe military maneuvers in Bosnia, scheduled for June 1914. Afterward, the Archduke and his wife planned to visit Sarajevo and open the state museum in its new premises. Their eldest son, Duke Maximilian, later said that Sophie came along out of fear for her husband's safety.

  Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, was of high aristocratic birth but did not belong to a dynastic family. Her union with the Habsburg heir could therefore only be a morganatic marriage. Franz Joseph had consented on one condition: their descendants would never ascend the throne. The 14th anniversary of the wedding fell on the same date as the visit. The historian A. J. P. Taylor explains why that mattered. Sophie could never share her husband's rank or sit beside him on a public occasion. A loophole existed when he acted in a military capacity. In Sarajevo, Taylor writes, "the Archduke and his wife could ride in an open carriage side by side." His verdict: "Thus, for love, did the Archduke go to his death."

  Franz Ferdinand also carried a political reputation. He favored increased federalism and was widely believed to support trialism. Under that plan, the Slavic lands of the empire would be combined into a third crown beside Austria and Hungary. A Slavic kingdom of that kind could have served as a bulwark against Serb irredentism. For exactly that reason, irredentists saw him as a threat. Princip later told the court that preventing the Archduke's planned reforms was one of his motives.

  The date carried a third meaning. It is the feast of St. Vitus, which fell on the 15th of June in the Julian calendar. In Serbia it is called Vidovdan, and it commemorates the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans in 1389. At that battle, a Serb killed Sultan Murad I in his tent. Princip, Čabrinović and other members of Young Bosnia drew inspiration from the hero Miloš Obilić, in effect reenacting the Kosovo Myth. Čabrinović was deeply immersed in it and personally identified with the Kosovo heroes. Princip, it is known, had learned by heart Petar II Petrović-Njegoš's The Mountain Wreath, one of the most celebrated works of South Slavic literature.

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• 4. Young Conspirators

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  In January 1914, Major Vojislav Tankosić, who by then ran guerrilla training, called a planning meeting of Serbian irredentists in Toulouse, France. Among those summoned was Muhamed Mehmedbašić, a Muslim carpenter from Herzegovina. According to Luigi Albertini, he was "eager to carry out an act of terrorism to revive the revolutionary spirit of Bosnia." The participants discussed several Austro-Hungarian targets, Franz Ferdinand among them. They decided only to send Mehmedbašić to Sarajevo to kill the governor, Oskar Potiorek.

  On the journey home, police searched his train for a thief. Fearing they were after him, he threw his weapons, a dagger and a bottle of poison, into the lavatory. Back in Bosnia he wrote to Vladimir Gaćinović and then did nothing until Danilo Ilić summoned him to Mostar. On the 26th of March 1914, Ilić told him that Belgrade now judged an attack on Franz Ferdinand far more important, and would support it.

  Ilić was a Bosnian Serb who had worked as a schoolteacher and a bank worker. In 1913 and 1914 he lived with his mother, who ran a small boarding house in Sarajevo, and outwardly off her. He belonged to a secret revolutionary circle organized on the model of the Black Hand.

  Unknown to the Black Hand, a second plot had arisen that spring. In Belgrade, Nedeljko Čabrinović showed his friend Gavrilo Princip a newspaper cutting announcing the Archduke's June visit to Bosnia. Both were young Bosnian Serbs, eager to return home and strike at an imperial official, which they saw as the ultimate act of heroism. Princip asked another friend, Trifko Grabež, to join. He then wrote to Ilić, his former roommate and confidant, asking him to recruit people in Sarajevo.

  Ilić found seventeen-year-old high-school student Vaso Čubrilović and eighteen-year-old student Cvjetko Popović. Mehmedbašić joined them shortly after Orthodox Easter. Five of the six assassins were under 20, and Mehmedbašić was 26 or 27. All were Austro-Hungarian citizens, and none came from Serbia.

  The three in Belgrade approached Milan Ciganović, a Bosnian Serb and former guerrilla fighter known to have good connections and access to arms. Through him they reached Tankosić. Agreement came quickly, but the weapons were held up for more than a month. Ciganović told Grabež: "Nothing doing, the old Emperor is ill and the Heir Apparent will not go to Bosnia." When the emperor recovered, the plan came back to life. Tankosić gave them one FN Model 1910 pistol, and they practiced with a few rounds of scarce, expensive ammunition in a park near Belgrade.

  The rest arrived on the 26th of May. The three testified that Tankosić, directly and through Ciganović, supplied six hand grenades and four new pistols. He also provided money, suicide pills, training, and a special map with the gendarmes marked on it. Finally came a small card authorizing the use of a clandestine "tunnel" for smuggling agents and arms into Austria-Hungary. Tankosić later told the journalist and historian Luciano Magrini that the idea of the suicide pills was his own.

  On the 28th of May, Princip, Grabež and Čabrinović left Belgrade by boat and traveled along the Sava river to Šabac. There they handed the card to Captain Popović of the Serbian Border Guard. He gave them a letter and the names of three customs officials whose identities they could borrow for discounted train tickets to the border town of Loznica. In Loznica, Princip and Grabež quarreled with Čabrinović over his repeated lapses in operational security. Čabrinović handed over his weapons, and Princip sent him alone to Zvornik to cross officially on Grabež's identity card.

  Sergeant Budivoj Grbić led Princip and Grabež on foot to Isaković's Island, a small island in the middle of the Drina that divided Serbia from Bosnia. They crossed into Austria-Hungary on the evening of the 1st of June. Agents of Narodna Odbrana then passed them and the weapons from safe house to safe house until they reached Tuzla on the 3rd of June.

  In Tuzla came a stroke of chance. Čabrinović's father was a Sarajevo police official, and Čabrinović happened to meet one of his father's friends, Detective Ivan Vila. By coincidence, all three conspirators boarded the same train to Sarajevo as the detective. Čabrinović asked him when the Archduke's visit would take place. The next morning, he told the others it would be the 28th of June.

  The weapons followed. On the 15th of June, Miško Jovanović handed Ilić a large box of sugar in Doboj with the weapons hidden inside. Ilić returned to Sarajevo carefully, changing to a local train outside the city and then quickly to a tram to avoid the police. He hid the weapons in a suitcase under a sofa at his mother's house. Around the 17th of June he traveled to Brod, and at trial he gave a confusing explanation. First he said he went to prevent the assassination, then that he came back from Brod to prevent it. The historian Vladimir Dedijer suggests he went to meet Djuro Šarac, an emissary of Apis carrying orders to cancel the plot.

  Ilić began handing out the weapons on the 27th of June. Until then he had kept the Belgrade group and the local recruits ignorant of each other. That night, in a Sarajevo café, he introduced Mehmedbašić to Princip with the words: "Mehmedbašić who to-morrow is to be with us."

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• 5. Morning in Sarajevo

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  On Sunday morning, Danilo Ilić walked the motorcade route, urging the six assassins to be brave as they took their places. Franz Ferdinand's party came by train from Ilidža Spa and was met at Sarajevo station by Governor Oskar Potiorek. Six automobiles were waiting. By mistake, three local police officers climbed into the first car with the chief of special security. The special security officers who were meant to accompany him were left behind. The third car was a Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS open sports car with its top folded down. In it rode Franz Ferdinand, Sophie, Governor Potiorek and Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach.

  Protection was thin. General Michael von Appel, the local military commander, proposed lining the route with troops. He was told that this would offend the loyal citizenry. The task therefore fell to the Sarajevo police, and only about 60 of them were on duty.

  The first two assassins did nothing. Mehmedbašić stood before the garden of the Mostar Café with a bomb and failed to act. Beside him, Vaso Čubrilović, armed with a pistol and a bomb, also failed to act. Farther along, near the Miljacka river, Nedeljko Čabrinović waited on the opposite side of the street. At 10:10 am he threw his bomb at the Archduke's car. It bounced off the folded-back cover and landed in the road. Its timed detonator then set it off under the next car, which was put out of action. The blast left a crater measuring 1 ft 6.5 in and wounded between 16 and 20 people.

  Čabrinović swallowed his cyanide pill and jumped into the Miljacka. Both measures failed. The old cyanide only made him vomit, and after the hot, dry summer the river was only 13 cm deep. Police dragged him out, and a crowd severely beat him before he was taken into custody. The procession sped away toward the Town Hall, leaving the disabled car behind. Cvjetko Popović, Princip and Grabež did not act as the motorcade raced past.

  At the Town Hall, Franz Ferdinand showed signs of stress. He interrupted Mayor Fehim Čurčić's prepared welcome to protest: "Mr. Mayor, I came here on a visit and I am greeted with bombs. It is outrageous." Sophie whispered in his ear. After a pause he said: "Now you may speak." His own speech was brought to him still wet with blood from the damaged car. To it he added a few remarks 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 debated what to do next. Baron Rumerskirch, the Archduke's chamberlain, proposed staying at the Town Hall until troops could line the streets. Potiorek vetoed the idea because soldiers fresh from maneuvers would lack suitable dress uniforms. "Do you think that Sarajevo is full of assassins?" he asked.

  The couple dropped their program to visit the wounded in the hospital. Count Harrach stood on the left running board to shield the Archduke from the river side. At 10:45 am the party set off again in the same third car. Potiorek had decided the motorcade should run straight along the Appel Quay to the hospital and avoid the crowded center. He never told the drivers. The historian Joachim Remak says the aide who should have informed the Archduke's driver, Erik von Merizzi, was in the hospital. Police chief Edmund Gerde, who had repeatedly warned Potiorek about weak security, was asked to pass on the route. In the confusion he neglected to. So the driver, Leopold Lojka, turned right at the Latin Bridge, just as the two cars ahead had done.

  Princip had learned that the first attempt failed. He had moved to a spot in front of Schiller's delicatessen, near the Latin Bridge. Potiorek called out to the driver to stop, since he was going the wrong way. Lojka braked, tried to put the car into reverse, and stalled the engine close to where Princip stood. Princip stepped onto the footboard and fired at point-blank range with a Belgian-made Fabrique Nationale Model 1910 pistol of .380 caliber. According to Albertini, the first bullet wounded the Archduke in the jugular vein, and the second struck the Duchess in the abdomen. Princip tried to shoot himself but was seized at once. At his sentencing he said he had meant to kill Potiorek, not Sophie.

  Sophie fell unconscious across Franz Ferdinand's legs. He too lost consciousness on the drive to the Governor's residence. Count Harrach reported his last words: "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!" When Harrach asked about his injury, he answered "It is nothing" six or seven times. A violent choking sound from hemorrhage followed. Sophie was dead on arrival, and Franz Ferdinand died ten minutes later. Both were dead by 11:30 am.

  A popular story says Princip ate a sandwich at Schiller's delicatessen just before the shooting. No primary source from the time mentions it. The myth likely began with the 2001 novel Twelve Fingers. The pistols themselves are better documented. Serial numbers 19074, 19075, 19120 and 19126 were supplied to the assassins. Richard Belfield says Princip used number 19074, while Ian Howgate, a researcher of the Bosnian archives, says it was 19075. Three of the pistols are in the Museum of Military History, and the fourth, number 19075, is missing.

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• 6. Funeral and Fury

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  On the evening of the killings, crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened. Among European royal houses the murder produced widespread shock, and at first there was much sympathy for the Austrian position. Inside Austria-Hungary, the night brought violence against Serbs. Anti-Serb pogroms and demonstrations were organized across the empire, especially in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia. The source credits Potiorek with organizing and stimulating them. The first demonstrations, led by followers of Josip Frank, began in Zagreb in the early evening.

  The next day, anti-Serb demonstrations in Sarajevo turned more violent and amounted to a pogrom. The police and local authorities did nothing to stop it. The writer Ivo Andrić called it the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate." Two Serbs were killed on the first day, and many more were attacked. Around 1,000 houses, shops, schools and institutions owned by Serbs, such as banks, hotels and printing houses, were razed or pillaged. The military eventually restored order.

  The bodies of the Archduke and Sophie traveled to Trieste aboard the battleship SMS Viribus Unitis, then on to Vienna by special train. The funeral was arranged by Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo, the Obersthofmeister of the Royal Household. He was said to have been a lifelong enemy of Franz Ferdinand. With the Emperor's connivance, he turned the ceremony into a massive snub. Most foreign royalty had planned to attend, but they were pointedly disinvited. Only the immediate imperial family came, and the couple's three children were excluded from the few public ceremonies.

  Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Archduke's friend, was invited so the Imperial Cabinet could consult him on foreign policy. He declined. Publicly he blamed a case of lumbago, but Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg revealed that the real reason was security concerns. The officer corps was forbidden to salute the funeral train, which sparked a minor revolt led by Archduke Karl, the new heir presumptive. Public viewing of the coffins was severely curtailed. Montenuovo even tried, without success, to make the children pay the bill.

  The insults extended to the coffins themselves. Sophie's was slanted down from her husband's to reassert her lower social status. Gloves were placed on top of it, as was traditional for a lady-in-waiting. Because the Duchess could not be buried in the Imperial Crypt, the couple were interred at Artstetten Castle.

  Franz Joseph's own reaction was recorded by his daughter, Marie Valerie. She noted that her father expressed greater confidence in the new heir, his grandnephew. The Emperor admitted to her about the assassination: "For me, it is a relief from a great worry."

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• 7. Courts and Contested Blame

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  The Sarajevo trial ran from the 12th to the 23rd of October 1914, with verdicts on the 28th of October. Twenty-five people were indicted, including helpers along the smuggling route. Most faced charges of conspiracy to commit high treason involving official circles in Serbia. That charge carried a possible death sentence, which conspiracy to commit simple murder did not.

  The adult defendants, facing the gallows, portrayed themselves as unwilling participants. Veljko Čubrilović, who helped coordinate the transport of the weapons, said Princip threatened to destroy his family if he betrayed the plan. Asked why he did not seek the law's protection, he answered: "I was more afraid of terror than the law."

  The three assassins from Belgrade took full responsibility. Princip insisted: "Our enterprise was purely private and in no way official as the prosecution asserts. Serbia has no hand in it and cannot be held responsible for our deed." Asked how he meant to reach his goal of a free South Slav state, he replied: "By means of terror." Grabež said he would never have taken part had he known it would lead to a European war. The court did not believe them. Despite the absence of proof, it ruled that Narodna Odbrana and Serbian military circles had collaborated in the outrage.

  Princip, Čabrinović and Grabež each received 20 years. Austro-Hungarian law capped sentences at 20 years for those under 20 at the time of the crime. The court heard arguments about Princip's age, because there was doubt about his true date of birth, and concluded that he was under 20. Vaso Čubrilović received 16 years and Cvjetko Popović 13. Danilo Ilić, Veljko Čubrilović and Miško Jovanović were hanged on the 3rd of February 1915. Two other death sentences were commuted by the Emperor on the recommendation of the Finance Minister, who administered Bosnia. Nine defendants were acquitted. Čabrinović expressed regret at trial, and afterward received a letter of complete forgiveness from the three young children the assassins had orphaned. He and Princip died of tuberculosis in prison.

  Mehmedbašić missed the Sarajevo dock entirely. He was arrested in Montenegro but escaped from the Nikšić prison before extradition, possibly with help from guards who were then arrested themselves. He resurfaced in Serbia and joined Tankosić's Chetnik detachment. Tankosić died in battle in late 1915 and never faced a court.

  A second trial took place in the spring of 1917, in very different circumstances. In late 1916 and early 1917, secret peace talks were held between Austria-Hungary and France. There is evidence of parallel talks between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. Charles I of Austria set out a key demand: guarantees that no further political agitation against Austria-Hungary would come from Serbia. Regent Alexander and loyal officers had already been planning to remove the military clique headed by Apis, who threatened the Regent's power.

  On the 15th of March 1917, Apis and officers loyal to him were indicted by a Serbian court martial on the French-controlled Salonica front. The charges were false and unrelated to Sarajevo. The historian John Paul Newman describes them as fabricated and part of a staged trial meant to eliminate the organization's leadership. In 1953, the case was retried before the Supreme Court of Serbia, and all the defendants were exonerated.

  On the 23rd of May, Apis and eight associates were sentenced to death. The Serbian High Court reduced the number to seven, and Regent Alexander commuted four more. Three men were shot by firing squad on the 26th of June 1917: Apis, Ljuba Vulović and Rade Malobabić. Mehmedbašić received 15 years, was later commuted, and was released in 1919. Prime Minister Pašić justified the executions to his envoy in London: "Dimitrijević (Apis) besides everything else admitted he had ordered Franz Ferdinand to be killed. And now who could reprieve them?" Driven to his execution, Apis remarked to the driver that he was to be killed by Serbian rifles solely because he had organized the Sarajevo outrage.

  Apis's boast has limits. It was unproven and made in 1917, in an attempt to save his own life. Other threads in the record point in several directions. Soon after the assassination, Serbian ambassadors in Paris and St. Petersburg claimed that Serbia had warned Austria-Hungary. Prime Minister Pašić denied it in July 1914 interviews with Az Est and the Paris edition of the New York Herald. Education Minister Ljubomir Jovanović wrote that Pašić reviewed the plot with his cabinet in late May or early June. On the 18th of June, a vague telegram told Serbia's ambassador in Vienna, Jovan Jovanović, to warn Austria-Hungary. On the 21st of June, he met Finance Minister Leon Biliński and spoke in general terms of risks to the Archduke. Colonel Lešjanin reported that Biliński dismissed it, saying only: "Let us hope nothing does happen." No action followed. Years later the ambassador's account shifted back and forth.

  Rade Malobabić was Serbian Military Intelligence's chief undercover operative against Austria-Hungary. Apis's confession says: "I engaged Malobabić to organize the assassination." On the eve of his execution, Malobabić told a priest that he had been ordered to go to Sarajevo when the assassination was to occur. Dedijer presented testimony that Malobabić arrived in Sarajevo on the eve of the attack and gave Ilić the final go-ahead.

  Historians also debate whether the plot belonged to the Black Hand or to Serbian military intelligence. By 1914 the Black Hand was moribund, run by Apis as a creature of his office. Its constitution allowed only certain bodies to order such an assassination, and no such order was made. Apis's confession opens with the words "As the Chief of the Intelligence Department of the General Staff." These points favor military intelligence. Ciganović's involvement, the Black Hand membership of key officers and the lack of an official budget favor the Black Hand.

  Milan Ciganović raises a further puzzle. Ljubomir Jovanović said Pašić learned of the plan early enough for the border guards to be ordered to stop the assassins. Albertini concluded the source was most likely Ciganović. He had a government sinecure and protection from the Chief of Police. When Austria-Hungary demanded the arrest of Tankosić and Ciganović, Serbia arrested only Tankosić and said Ciganović could not be found. Ciganović alone among the conspirators escaped the Salonika trial, and even testified against his comrades there.

  The last suspect was Russian. Apis's confession says that the Russian military attaché, Viktor Artamonov, promised Russian protection if Serbia were ever attacked. Artamonov denied his office's involvement and told Albertini he had been on vacation in Italy. Albertini wrote that he "remained unconvinced by the behavior of this officer." Artamonov's assistant, Alexander Werchovsky, admitted the involvement of the office and then fell silent.

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• 8. Ultimatum and Legacy

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  Within two days of the killings, Austria-Hungary and Germany advised Serbia to open an investigation. Slavko Grujić, the Secretary-General of the Serbian Foreign Ministry, replied: "Nothing had been done so far and the matter did not concern the Serbian Government." An angry exchange followed with the Austrian Chargé d'Affaires in Belgrade. Austria-Hungary then conducted its own criminal investigation, confirmed that Germany would honor its military alliance, and won over the sceptical Hungarian prime minister, Count István Tisza.

  On the 23rd of July 1914, Austria-Hungary sent Serbia a formal letter that became known as the July Ultimatum. It demanded that Serbia suppress propaganda advocating the violent destruction of Austria-Hungary and remove its authors from the military. It also demanded the dissolution of Narodna Odbrana, the arrest of those on Serbian soil involved in the plot, and an end to the smuggling of arms. It asked that Austro-Hungarian officials take part in the Serbian inquiry. Serbia had 48 hours to accept everything, or the Austro-Hungarian ambassador would leave.

  After receiving a telegram of support from Russia, Serbia mobilized its army and replied. It fully accepted points 8 and 10, which covered an end to the weapons smuggling and a report on the measures taken. It partially accepted, finessed, answered disingenuously or politely rejected the preamble and the other demands. Austria-Hungary published the shortcomings of the reply and broke diplomatic relations. According to a 2021 study, Franz Ferdinand's absence was key to the breakdown of diplomacy. He had been the most powerful and effective proponent of peace in Vienna.

  The next day, Serbian reservists traveling on Danube steamers crossed onto the Austro-Hungarian side at Temes-Kubin. Austro-Hungarian soldiers fired into the air to warn them off. The incident was first reported to Franz Joseph, wrongly, as "a substantial skirmish." Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and mobilized part of its army on the 28th of July 1914. Under the Secret Treaty of 1892, Russia and France were obliged to mobilize if any Triple Alliance member did. Russia partially mobilized on the 29th of July and ordered general mobilization on the 30th. That set off full mobilization in Austria-Hungary and Germany. Soon every Great Power except Italy had chosen a side.

  Vaso Čubrilović looked back on it with a sense of loss. "We destroyed a beautiful world that was lost forever due to the war that followed," he said. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Princip's legacy was reevaluated in the successor states, and opinion of him is largely divided along ethnic lines. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks and Croats largely see him as a terrorist and an ethnic Serb nationalist. Many Serbs consider him a national hero.

  The 100th anniversary showed the divide. The European Union organized a Vienna Philharmonic concert in the Sarajevo City Hall, with Austrian president Heinz Fischer as guest of honor. Serb nationalists and dignitaries boycotted the commemorations. A statue of Princip was erected in East Sarajevo on the anniversary, and another in Belgrade in June 2015. Serbian history textbooks deny that Serbia or Princip started the war and blame the Central Powers instead. Milorad Dodik acknowledged that Bosnia is "still divided," yet called Princip a "freedom fighter" and Austria-Hungary an "occupier."

  The event also left a mark on literature. Ivo Andrić, a Nobel Prize laureate, published The Bridge on the Drina in 1945. Barbara W. Tuchman won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for The Guns of August in 1963.

  Physical traces survive in several countries. The Archduke's car, his bloodstained uniform and the chaise longue on which he died are on permanent display in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna. The bullet fired by Princip, sometimes called "the bullet that started World War I," is an exhibit at Konopiště Castle near Benešov in the Czech Republic. A bronze medallion of Ferdinand and Sophie, once part of a monument at the site that was demolished in 1918 during Yugoslav rule, is kept in the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

  One object has vanished. A marble plaque honoring Princip and the assassination was erected in 1930. After the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, German troops and Volksdeutsche removed it. It was given to Adolf Hitler as a 52nd birthday present, and he sent it to the Berlin Zeughaus military museum. It stayed on display there until 1945, when it disappeared.

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