Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were shot to death in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia, a group aiming at the unification of the South Slavs. The event sparked off the outbreak of World War I. (See: Causes of World War I).

Under The Treaty of Berlin (1878) Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Ottoman Empire retained official sovereignty. In 1908 the foreign ministers of Russia (Isvolski) and Austria (Aehrenthal) informally entered into what came to be known as the Buchlau bargain under which Austria-Hungary would annex Bosnia-Herzegovina and in return would withdraw from the Sanjak of Novisbazar and support Russian efforts to amend the Treaty of Berlin to allow Russian naval vessels to pass through the Dardanelles during time of war. Austria-Hungary moved quickly to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina but Russia's efforts to amend the Treaty of Berlin were blocked by Britain. Russia felt cheated and Serbia which hoped one day to itself rule over these provinces felt the Sanjak insufficient compensation and mobilized its army. In the end, Russia told Serbia it was not yet ready for war with Germandom and Serbia backed down by signing the March (1909) Declaration promising to respect what decision the Great Powers should make with regards to Bosnia-Herzegovina and to maintain friendly relations with Austria-Hungary. Soon thereafter, the Great Powers amended the Treaty of Berlin to allow Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The crisis had passed but the seeds for future conflict were sewn as Russia and Serbia nursed their grievances.

In late June 1914, Franz Ferdinand visited Bosnia in order to observe military manoeuvers and to open a museum in Sarajevo. June 28th was the 14th anniverary of the Morganic Oath, where Franz Ferdinand was given permission by Emperor Franz Joseph to marry his love, Sophie Chotek (a Slav born too far beneath his station), in exchange for Franz Ferdindand's oath that the children from this union would never ascend the throne. Sophie Chotek was pregnant with their fourth child and was happy to accompany her husband to Bosnia and celebrate their anniversary far from the Vienna court where she was treated poorly.

Franz Ferdinand was widely believed to be an advocate of 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. Principe stated to the court that preventing Franz Ferdinand's planned reforms was one of his motivations.

The day of the assassination, June 28, is June 15 in the Julian calendar, the feast of St. Vitus. In Serbia, it is called Vidovdan and commemorates the 1389 Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans at which the Sultan was assassinated in his tent by a Serb; it is an occasion for Serbian patriotic observances.

In late 1913 Danilo Ilic, came to the Serbian listening post at Užice to speak to his handler and recommend an end to the period of terrorist organization building and a move to direct action against Austria-Hungary. Colonel Popovic stated to the historian Albertini that he passed Danilo Ilic on to Belgrade to discuss this matter with Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence Dragutin Dimitrievic (Apis). Ilic and Apis took the secrets of their discussion to their graves, but soon after their meeting, Apis’ right hand man, Major Vojislav Tankosic, called a Serbian terror-planning meeting in Tolouse, France. This is established by the statement of Paul Bastaic and Mustafa Golubic to the diplomat and historian Milos Bogicevic. During this January 1914 meeting, various possible Austro-Hungarian targets for assassination were discussed including Franz-Ferdinand, but ultimately, at this meeting, it was decided only to dispatch Mohamed Mehmedbasic to Sarajevo, to kill the Governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek.

Mehmedbasic was delayed and before he made an attempt on Potiorek, Apis ordered the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand (as evidenced by Apis’ confession to the Serbian Court). Mehmedbasic told the historian Albertini that Ilic summoned him to Mostar and informed him that Belgrade had scrubbed the mission to kill the governor in favor of the murder of Franz-Ferdinand and that Mehmbedbasic should stand by for the new operation.

Ilic recruited the Serbian youths Vaso Cubrilovic and Cvjetko Popovic a little after Easter (April 19, 1914), for the assassination as evidenced by the testimony of Ilic, Cubrilovic, and Popovic at the Sarajevo trial. Three Bosnian Serb youths living in Belgrade, Gavrilo Princip, Trifun Grabez, and Nedjelko Cabrinovic testified at the Sarajevo trial that at about the same time, (a little after Easter) they were eager to carry out an outrage and approached Milan Ciganovic and through him Major Tankosic and reached an agreement to transport arms to Sarajevo and participate in The Outrage.

At trial, the 3 terrorists from Belgrade testified that Tankosic, directly and through Ciganovic, not only provided 6 hand grenades, 4 Browning Automatic Pistols and ammunition, but also money, suicide pills, training, a special map with the location of gendarmes marked, knowledge of contacts on a special channel used to infiltrate agents and arms into Austria Hungary and a small card authorizing the use of that special channel. Major Tankosic confirmed to the historian Luciano Magrini that he provided the bombs and revolvers and was responsible for the terrorists’ training and that he initiated the idea of the suicide pills.

After receiving this training and support from Major Tankosic and his associates, the three terrorists traveled from Belgrade to Sabac and handed the small card to Captain Popovic of the Serbian Border Guard. Popovic in turn provided the terrorists with a letter to Captain Prvanovic and sent them on to Loznica, a small border town. When they reached Loznica, Captain Prvanovic summoned 3 of his revenue sergeants to discuss the best way to cross the border undetected. Sergeant Grbic accepted the task and led Princip and Grabez with the weapons to Isakovic’s Island, a small island in the middle of the Drina River that separated Serbia from Austria-Hungary, (Cabrinovic crossed at another point without weapons) and then handed off the two terrorists and their weapons to the agents of the Serbian Narodna Obrana for transport into Austria-Hungarian territory and from safe-house to safe-house.

The terrorists and weapons were passed from agent to agent until they arrived in Tuzla where the terrorists left their weapons in the hands of the Narodna Obrana agent Misko Jovanovic. The Agents reported back their activities to the Narodna Obrana President, Boza Milanovic, who in turn reported to the then Caretaker Prime Minister Pasic. The report adds the name of a new military conspirator, Major Kosta Todorovic, apparently the immediate superior of Captains Popovic and Prvanovic. Pasic’s handwritten notes document the Prime Minister’s advanced knowledge of the plot and that he was able to connect Major Tankosic. The Austrians captured the report, Pasic’s handwritten notes, and additional documents corroborating the Civilian Government’s foreknowledge of the plot, and the involvement of Major Todorovic and Captain Prvanovic.

From Tuzla, Grabez and Cabrinovic went on to their parents’ homes to lie low until Franz-Ferdinand’s arrival and Princip stayed at Ilic’s mother’s house and there met Ilic. After meeting Princip, Ilic went to Tuzla to bring the weapons to Sarajevo. Misko Jovanovic hid the weapons in a large box of sugar and the two went separately by train to Doboj where Jovanovic handed off the box to Ilic. Ilic brought the weapons back to his mother’s house on June 15 and kept them in a suitcase under a sofa.

Ilic testified that on June 18 he went to Brod and here begins an interesting twist in the plot, because Ilic claimed that from this time on he opposed the assassination. According to Ceda Popovic, Djuro Sarac was sent to Sabac by Tankosic to meet with Ilic and cancel the assassination. It is about 100km along the river Sabe from Brod to Sabac.

In further testimony Ilic, Princip and Grabez describe how after Ilic returned from Brod he tried to prevent the assassination. But then, and this is a point of some controversy, on the eve of the assassination, Masterspy Rade Malobabic arrived in Sarajevo on the orders of the Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Marshall Putnik, and apparently gave the final go ahead on the assassination and only then did Ilic hand out the weapons to the assassins. The evidence of this is Rade Malobabic's confession to a priest, Colonel Ljubomir Vulović's statement to the Serbian Court that he received orders from Putnik and sent Malobabic into Austria-Hungary, witness accounts from Sarajevo, and Dragutin Dimitrievic's confession to the Serbian Court that he had ordered Malobabic to organize the assassination. Still all these statements and accounts are open to multiple interpretations and its possible Malobabic was conducting other business on behalf of the Serbian Military on this particular visit to Austria-Hungary.

To sum up so far, the Serbian Military, including the Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Marshall Putnik, Colonels Apis and Vulovic, Majors Tankosic, Mojic and Todorovic, Captains Popovic and Prvanovic, sergeant Grbic, and two other unnamed sergeants, and Rade Malobabic is implicated by the evidence in the assassination conspiracy. A number of agents of the Narodna Obrana, an organization officially recognized by Serbia and reporting to the Prime Minister, are also implicated in the assassination. Knowledge of the plot circulated widely and we must now turn our attention to how, once the Serbian Caretaker Government became aware of the assassination plot, The Serbia Civilian Government failed to take firm measures to prevent the assassination.

Caretaker Prime Minister Pasic learned of the assassination plot and informed members of his cabinet in late May or early June according to Ljuba Jovanovic in the article "The Blood of Slavism". Other evidence making it clear Pasic had sufficient advanced warning to have prevented the attack include Pasic’s handwritten notes on the briefing by the Narodna Obrana and the statement of Serbian Military Attache to Vienna, Colonel Lesanin to the historian Luciano Magrini. The statements of Colonel Lesanin, and Ljuba Jovanovic cite certain half-measures taken by the Prime Minister providing Pasic with plausible deniability.

The half-measures were doomed to failure and the Prime Minister surely must have known that. The first half-measure was the instruction to the border guards to block the assassins. Jovanovic’s account makes it clear that the Prime Minister did not give his order immediately but rather reviewed it with his ministers after some time had elapsed, giving the assassins time to cross into Austria-Hungary, and he did not give the order through the proper channel. In the Spring of 1914 the Serbian Civilian Government was in the process of trying to establish its authority over the Serbian Military and the Serbian Military was resisting by all means available including refusing to follow orders, forcing Prime Minister Pasic to resign and when the Prime Minister was reinstated, an attempted putsch in Macedonia. Prime Minister Pasic needed to get King Petar to issue the order if there was to be any chance it would be obeyed and this the Prime Minister did not do. The second half-measure was to give Austria an oblique warning through Serbia’s embassy in Vienna. The ambassador was a known ally of the military conspirators and his instructions were carried out poorly and not followed up on. To be successful Prime Minister Pasic should have approached the Austrian Ambassador to Serbia personally and provided the details he knew about including the name of one of the assassins, the agents who passed them along, the fact that the weapons were in Tuzla with Misko Jovanovic and so on. This also, Prime Minister Pasic did not do and so the assassination and its terrible consequences were allowed to proceed.

Note: The exact course of events was never firmly established, mostly due to inconsistent stories of witnesses.

The seven young conspirators were inexperienced with weapons, and it was only due to an extraordinary sequences of events that they were successful. Around 10:00 Franz Ferdinand, his wife and their party left the Philipovic army camp, where he had undertaken a brief review of the troops. The motorcade consisted of seven cars:

1. In the first car: the chief detective of Sarajevo and three local police officers.
2. In the second car: Sarajevo's Mayor, Fehim Efendi Curcic; Sarajevo's Commissioner of Police, Dr. Edmund Gerde.
3. In the third car: Franz Ferdinand; his wife Sophie; Bosnia's Governor General Oskar Potiorek; Franz Ferdinand's bodyguard Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach.
4. In the fourth car: the head of Franz Ferdinand's military chancery, Baron Carl von Rumerskirch; Sophie's lady-in-waiting Countess Wilma Lanyus von Wellenberg; Potiorek's chief adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Erich Edler von Merizzi; Lieutenant Colonel Count Alexander Boos-Waldeck.
5. In the fifth car: Adolf Egger, Director of the Fiat Factory in Vienna; Major Paul Höger; Colonel Karl Bardolff; Dr. Ferdinand Fischer.
6. In the sixth car: Baron Andreas von Morsey; Captain Pilz; other members of Franz Ferdinand's staff and Bosnian officials.
7. In the seventh car: Major Erich Ritter von Hüttenbrenner; Count Josef von Erbach-Fürstenau; Lieutenant Robert Grein.

At 10:15 the parade passed the first member of the group, Mehmed Mehmedbašić. He had placed himself in an upstairs window, but later claimed that he could not get a clear shot and decided to hold fire so as not to jeopardize the mission by alerting the authorities. The second member, Nedeljko Čabrinović, threw a bomb (or a stick of dynamite, according to some reports) at Franz Ferdinand's car, but missed. The explosion destroyed the following car, severely wounding the passengers, a policeman and several members of the crowd. Čabrinović swallowed his cyanide pill and jumped into the shallow river Miljacka. The procession sped away towards the Town Hall, and the scene turned to chaos. Police dragged Čabrinović out of the river, and he was severely beaten by the crowd before being taken into custody. His cyanide pill was either old or of too weak a dosage and had not worked. The river was also only 4 inches deep and failed to drown him. Some of the other assassins left, either assuming that Franz Ferdinand had been killed or losing their nerve.

Arriving at the Town Hall for a scheduled reception, Franz Ferdinand showed understandable signs of stress, interrupting a prepared speech of welcome by Mayor Curcic to protest "we come here and people throw bombs at us". He then became calm and the remainder of the reception passed tensely but without incident. Officials and members of the Archduke's party discussed how to guard against another assassination attempt without coming to any coherent conclusion. A suggestion that the troops outside the city be brought in to line the streets was reportedly rejected because they did not have their parade uniforms with them on manoeuvres. Security was accordingly left to the small Sarajevo police force. The only obvious measure taken was for one of Franz Ferdinand's military aides to take up a protective position on the left hand running board of his car. This is confirmed by photographs of the scene outside the Town Hall.

The remaining conspirators had been obstructed by the heavy crowds, and it appeared that the assassination plan had failed. However, after the reception at the Town Hall, Franz Ferdinand decided to go to the hospital and visit the wounded victims of Čabrinović's bomb. Meanwhile, Gavrilo Princip had gone to a nearby food shop, either having given up or assuming that the bomb attack had been successful. Emerging, he saw Franz Ferdinand's open car reversing after having taken a wrong turn as it drove past, near the Latin Bridge. The driver, Franz Urban, had not been advised of the hospital change in plan and had continued on a route that would take the Archduke and his party directly out of the city. Pushing forward to the right hand side of the car, Gavrilo Princip twice fired a Belgian made Fabrique Nationale M 1910 semi-automatic pistol in 7.65×17 mm (.32 ACP) caliber (serial number 19074). The first bullet went through the side of the vehicle and hit Sophie in the abdomen, and the second hit Franz Ferdinand in the neck. Princip later claimed that his intention was to kill Governor General Potiorek and not Sophie.

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Both victims remained seated upright, but dying while being driven to the Governor's residence for medical treatment. Franz Ferdinand's last words, moments after being shot, were reported by von Harrach as "Sophie dear, don't die! Stay alive for our children!" („Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder!“)

Princip tried to kill himself, first by ingesting the cyanide, and then with his gun, but he vomited the apparently ineffective poison, and the gun was wrestled from his hand by onlookers before he had a chance to fire another shot.

Anti-Serb rioting broke out in Sarajevo in the hours following the assassination until order was restored by the military.

After allowing the murders to take place, the Serbian Civilian Government worked to cover up the full extent of the plot. This including denying it had conducted an investigation, denying it knew about the plot and providing safe haven to the conspirators (many conspirators were eventually arrested on other charges, but none were charged with the crimes of Sarajevo), refusing to cooperate with the Austro-Hungarian investigation, and continuing to keep known conspirators on the government payroll. The government briefly arrested Major Tankosic, but quickly released him and sent him back to his unit. Rade Malobabic was arrested but released on the request of Colonel Dimitrievic and Malobabic was given a commission operating a military supply store.

Mohamed Mehmedbasic escaped the Austro-Hungarian-police dragnet into Montenegro, where he bragged in a café about his role in Sarajevo and was therefore arrested by the Montenegrin police. Montenegro and Austria-Hungary had a reciprocal extradition treaty with regards to individuals who attack a sovereign of the state or members of his family, and so Montenegro was bound to arrest and turn-over Mehmedbasic.

Mehmedbasic told all to the Montenegrin authorities, including about the Tolouse planning meeting in January 1914. The Montenegrin Foreign Minister called in the French Ambassador and informed him of the details and then Montenegrin authorities illegally allowed Mehmedbasic to escape to Serbia where he joined with Tankosic’s unit. France and Montenegro kept the results of the interrogation a secret until part of it was divulged when the cable of the French Ambassador back to Paris was published after the war. Had Mehmedbasic been turned over to Austro-Hungarian authorities another avenue of investigation would have opened up outside of Serbia, including the rounding up of Paul Bastaic, Mustafa Golubic, and Vladimir Gacinovic. With them in custody, Danilo Ilic could have been confronted with taking orders from Belgrade and perhaps could have been forced to give up Apis; but France and Montenegro elected instead to obstruct the investigation.

(“Documents Diplomatiques Francais III Serie 1911-14, 3”, X Doc. 537 states that the January meeting took place in “Tours”, not Tolouse with the implication that this is the reason the Sûreté Générale found nothing when it investigated. The self-serving italics notwithstanding, with Mehmedbasic imprisoned on other charges in French controlled territory in 1916 and 1917, France elected not to perform its legal duty to investigate and arrest the conspirators giving the conspiracy France’s seal of approval.)

On June 26, 1917 in French occupied Salonika, Serbia executed Colonels Apis and Ljubomir Vulovic and Masterspy Rade Malobabic. Before their execution, these three men had confessed to their own involvement in and details of the conspiracy to assassinate Franz-Ferdinand including fingering the Russian Military attaché and Serbia’s top military officer. Apis, as mentioned earlier, made a written confession to the Serbian Court. The confession was suppressed by Serbia until its capture by the Axis during World War II. Vulovic made his statement at court-martial, the transcripts of which were briefly published and then pulled back and then published again after World War II. Malobabic made his statement to a priest hired by Serbia to report what he said. This too was kept secret. The executions were controversial at Entente capitals. To stifle criticism of the executions, Prime Minister Pasic put it this way to his embassy in Britain: “The officers in the Salonika affair had to be condemned, Vulovic and Malobabic were ordinary criminals (sic), and Dimitrijevic besides everything else admitted he had ordered Franz Ferdinand to be killed. And now who could reprieve them?” [from Black Hand on Trial, Salonika 1917 page 392]

In 1916, Serbia’s government in exile arrested Apis and many of his fellow conspirators. The arrests were politically motivated as Prince Regent Alexandar and Prime Minister Pasic eliminated a powerful rival. The arrests were also diplomatically motivated. Austria-Hungary was seeking a secret and separate peace with France and offered the return of Serbia (now occupied by Austria-Hungary and her allies) on condition that those behind Sarajevo would be punished. Serbia, without territory of its own, sent some of the accused to French Prisons and others were put into a concentration camp and an officers’ prison on the French controlled Salonika front. Peace talks floundered, but the prisoners were brought to trial nevertheless on various false charges, none of which could be made to stick even with a packed court and denial of choice of counsel and witnesses. Finally in mid-trial a new charge of attempting to kill Regent Aleksandar was brought and though this charge was false too (the verdicts were overturned posthumously) the defendants were found guilty and many received a death sentence. Responsibility for the murder of these key witnesses rests not only on Serbia, but on the occupying authority and willing jailor and transporter of the accused, France.

A salient point in Apis’ confession was that Russian Military Attaché to Belgrade Artamonov provided the funds required for The Outrage, and promised Russia’s protection from Austria-Hungary. This facilitation was broadly corroborated by Artamonov’s assistant, Alexander Werchovsky, a captain at the time of The Outrage to Louis Trydar-Burzinski, after which Werchovsky stopped talking. Artamonov denied his involvement saying whatever payments he made to Apis were for other work.

There is no evidence of advanced approval of The Outrage by Czar Nicholas II and it would seem out of character for him to authorize a royal assassination.

Russia helped to cover-up the conspiracy primarily through a telegram that a) advised Serbia to reject those terms of Austria-Hungary’s letter that infringed on Serbia’s sovereignty, and b) promised Russian diplomatic and military support and c) by denying its own involvement including a present day claim (“Rossiiskaia Kontrrazvedka I Tainaia Serbskaia Organizatsii ‘Chernaia Ruka’") that Russia had not one single agent in Serbia at the time of the Sarajevo assassinations.

The killing of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his pregnant wife produced widespread shock across Europe and there was initially much sympathy for the Austrian position. The Government in Vienna saw this as an opportunity to settle the perceived threat from Serbia once and for all. After conducting a criminal investigation and ascertaining that they could count on support from Germany, Austria-Hungary issued a letter to the government of Serbia reminding Serbia of its commitment to the Great Powers to respect their decision with regards to Bosnia-Herzegovina and maintain good neighborly relations with Austria Hungary, and containing specific demands aimed at destroying the terrorist apparatus and its propaganda support that had caused a series of assassination attempts culminating in the Sarajevo outrage. This letter became known as the July Ultimatum and Austria-Hungary stated that if Serbia did not accept all of the demands in toto within 48 hours that it would withdraw its embassy from Serbia. Serbia's initial inclination was to accept the Austro-Hungarian demands, but after receiving the opinion from Russia that it should reject any demands it felt impinged on its sovereignty and promising Russian support, Serbia decided to accede completely only to demands 8 and 10 and reject, finesse, misinterpret, or only partially accede to the other demands (See "Origins of the War", Albertini, Pp 365-371) and mobilized its army. Serbian reservists being transported on tramp steamers on the Danube, apparently accidentally, crossed on to the Austro-Hungarian side of the river at Temes-Kubin and Austro-Hungarian soldiers fired into the air to warn them off. This incident was blown out of proportion and Austria-Hungary then declared war and mobilized its army on July 28, 1914. Under the Secret Treaty of 1892 Russia and France were obligated to mobilize their armies if any of the triplice mobilized and soon all the Great Powers except Italy had chosen sides and gone to war.

Those of the conspirators who were under the age of 20 at the time of the assassination were sentenced to prison rather than execution. Three, including Danilo Ilić, were hanged. Čabrinović and Princip died of tuberculosis in prison. Some minor conspirators were acquitted.

It could be argued that this assassination set in train most of the major events of the 20th century, with its reverberations lingering into the 21st. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War is generally linked to the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. It also led to the success of the Russian Revolution, which helped lead to the Cold war. This, in turn, led to many of the major political developments of the twentieth century, such as the fall of the colonial empires and the rise of the United States and Soviet Russia to super-power status.

However, if the assassination had not occurred, it is probable that World War I would have still have erupted, triggered by another event at another time. The alliances noted above and the existence of vast and complex mobilisation plans that were almost impossible to reverse once put in motion made war on a huge scale increasingly likely from the beginning of the twentieth century.

The bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip, sometimes referred to as "the bullet that started World War I", is stored as a museum exhibit in the Konopiště Castle near the town of Benešov, Czech Republic.

Princip's weapon itself, along with the large car that the Archduke was riding in, his bloodstained light blue uniform and plumed cocked hat, and the chaise longue on which he was placed while being attended to by physicians, are kept as a permanent exhibit in the Museum of Military History, Vienna, Austria.

• Ponting, Clive. Thirteen Days, Chatto & Windus, London, 2002.
• Albertini, Luigi. Origins of the War of 1914, Oxford University Press, London, 1953.
• Dedijer, Vladimir. The Road to Sarajevo, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1966.
• MacKenzie, David. 'Black Hand' On Trial: Salonika 1917, Eastern European Monographs, 1995.
• Magrini, Luciano. Il Dramma Di Seraievo. Origini e responsabilita della guerra europa, Milan, 1929.
• Owings, W.A. Dolph. The Sarajevo Trial, Documentary Publications, Chapel Hill N.C., 1984.
• de Schelking, Eugene. Recollections of a Russian Diplomat, The Suicide of Monarchies, McMillan Co., New York, 1918.