Prof.Charles Santiapillai

The war began when “Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry.” – Private Baldrick in:
Blackadder Goes Forth

In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. Four years later, all of them had collapsed in the aftermath of what happened in Sarajevo on the morning of June 28, 1914.

Against all advice Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, accompanied by his pregnant wife Countess Sophie von Chotkova, Duchess of Hohenberg, decided to make a state visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Austrian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to inspect the army at the request of the Governor Oskar Potiorek and to dedicate a new hospital. This was despite the fact that his father, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph had explicitly forbidden him to be seen in public with his morganatic wife who came from a Czech aristocratic Bohemian family but was nevertheless a mere commoner and not royal.

The couple arrived by train at 9.28 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, 1914. The Slav newspaper Srbobran had printed the details of the state visit well in advance. On that bright, sunlit Sunday morning, the Royal couple came to Sarajevo in their Austrian-manufactured, open-top, Graf & Stift motorcar borrowed from Count Franz von Harrach and chauffeured by Franz Urban. Its license plate read AIII-118, which can be interpreted as referring to the Armistice Day A 11-11-18: November 11, 1918, the day World War I ended.

The seven conspirators spaced along the Archduke’s route were young Bosnian Serbs who belonged to a revolutionary movement known as Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia) opposed to the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. They wanted independence of the South Slavic peoples from Austria-Hungary and had already planned to assassinate the Archduke as his six-car entourage was driven along Sarajevo’s main road, the Appel Quay which ran along the north bank of Miljacka river, which was – like rivers in Texas “a mile long and inch deep” – very shallow.

One of the conspirators and member of the underground organization “Black Hand”, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, a typist of Serbian nationality tried to kill the Archduke by throwing a grenade which missed its target and exploded under another vehicle seriously wounding two of the occupants and injuring several spectators. It was 10.10 in the morning. He then tried to swallow his cyanide capsule and jump into the nearby shallow river Miljacka but was captured. The Archduke and his wife escaped unhurt and went to the City Hall for a reception where he famously shouted, “So you welcome your guests with bombs”.

Later the Archduke decided to abandon the visit and return via a different route and switched to a new car. Unfortunately no one had thought of informing the new chauffeur Leopold Lojka about the change in plan. So, instead of travelling straight, he took a right turn off Appel Quay into Franz Joseph Street. By taking that right turn, Leopold Lojka may have been unwittingly instrumental in starting the First World War also known as “The Great War”, for it was precisely at Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen on Franz Joseph Street that a young, teen-aged, disgruntled Bosnian Serb by the name Gavrilo Princip was waiting for the Archduke. At 10.55 a.m as the Royal motorcade turned into Franz Joseph Street and came by the Latin Bridge, the driver took a wrong turn and after realizing his mistake, he applied the brakes and tried to reverse and in doing so, the engine stalled and the gears got locked. Thus Archduke Franz Ferdinand became a sitting duck!

This gave the opportunity for Gavrilo Princip who finished his sandwich, got up and fired those fatal shots at close range that killed the Archduke and his wife in central Sarajevo a hundred years ago. A single bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip from his Browning FN 7.65 mm pistol missed his intended target, Oscar Potiorek the military governor of Bosnia; instead it hit the pregnant Archduchess Sophie on her abdomen killing her instantly. “A bullet does not go precisely where one wishes,” was the explanation given by Gavrilo Princip to justify the unintended murder of Franz Ferdinand’s wife, Sophie. The second bullet hit the Archduke on his neck rupturing the jugular vein, and thus mortally wounding him.

His last words to Sophie were: “Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder! (“Sophie dear! Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children”). The motorcade was driven to the Cognacs where an army surgeon attended on the couple. But it was too late. By 11.30 a.m. the Archduke had bled to death. Sadly, both the Archduke and his wife died on their 14th wedding anniversary and more significantly, on Serbia’s National Day – the anniversary of the battle in 1389 when the Serbs were conquered by the Ottoman Turks and in return another Serb, Milos Obilic, assassinated the Ottoman Sultan. When the news of the death of the Archduke reached his aged father Emperor Franz Joseph, he lamented saying “Horrible, horrible! No sorrow is spared me”. The assassination would set light to an entire continent mired in international intrigue and tensions.

Bosnia was home to three groups: the mostly Catholic Croats, the ethnic Serbs, and the Muslims left from centuries of Turkish rule. Following the defeat of the Turks in 1878, Bosnia-Herzegovina was transferred to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and 30 years later on October 6, 1908, Vienna annexed it. The mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war against Serbia at 11.10 a.m. on July 28, 1914, and within a week Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia mobilized their armies against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and thus began World War I – a military action proclaimed to be “The War to End All Wars”, at the end of which some16 million people were dead, 20 million wounded, 8 million missing and the four powerful empires – the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian and Turkish – disappeared off the world map. And in 1917, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin came to power.

Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb and Yugoslavian nationalist, was born on July 25, 1894 in a small village called Gornji Obljaj, located 185 km west of Sarajevo, close to the border with Croatia below the mountain range that divides Bosnia and Dalmatia. It is also described as Vukojebina – a very rude word in the Serbian/Croatian language (literally meaning “the place where wolves f***). Gornji Obljaj had been a part of the Muslim Ottoman Turkish Empire since 1463. Gavrilo Princip was one of nine children, five sons and four daughters, six of whom died in infancy, of Marija Nana and Petar Princip who was a postman. Gavrilo Princip left home when he was just 13 to study at the Military school in Sarajevo but changed his mind and instead enrolled at the Merchant’s School to study business for three years. In 1911 he became politically active and joined the Young Bosnia Movement made up of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims determined to achieve independence to Bosnia.

The Slavic nationalists were angry over the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. Gavrilo Princip and two others – Nedjelko Chabrinovic and Trifko Grabez – were recruited by the chief of the Intelligence Department in the Serbian army and Head of Black Hand, the infamous Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevitch whose nickname was “Apis, the Bee”. Each of them was given a Browning pistol, grenades, 150 dinars in cash, and a phial of potassium cyanide by the Serbian terrorist organization, Narodna Odbrana (National Defence) or Black Hand. When asked by the Judge at his trial, on October 12, 1914, why he killed the Archduke, Gavrilo Princip replied: “I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of State, but it must be freed from Austria.” Gavrilo Princip escaped the death penalty under the Hapsburg law since he was 15 days below the age 19 – so too young to be hanged. Instead he was imprisoned for 20 years, but he died of tuberculosis on April 28, 1918 at the age of 24. The prison where he died later became the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in north-western Czechoslovakia.

The real cause of war was European Imperialism. The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a great tragedy; for only he could have prevented the World War I. Bosnia’s principally Roman Catholic Croat community still considers Gavrilo Princip a terrorist. But today, many in Bosnia also regard him a national hero who fought against the oppressors of Serbs – the Imperial Hapsburgs. As the saying goes, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.