On the 28th of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia
and history will remember the name of one Serb from Bosnia.
Gavrilo Princip was born on July 13, 1894 in Obljaj near Bosansko Grahovo and died on April 28, 1918 in a Czech prison Teresienstadt.
As a member of a secret organization Young Bosnia he assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Crown Price Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28th, 1914.
Franz Ferdinand arrived to Sarajevo leading military forces that were executing maneuvers around the city.
The Serbian population of the city viewed his appearance as the head of the military command as provocation, since all this took place on St. Vitus Day.
During the investigation, Austro-Hungarian authorities came to the conclusion that the weapons used in the attack came from Serbia.
Although the official government of Serbia was not connected with this incident, but some people in high places, members of the organization Unity or Death—Black Hand—
the Austrian authorities had taken advantage of the current situation to deliver an ultimatum to Serbia.
Serbian authorities responded positively on all points of the ultimatum, except for one, which required sending the Austro-Hungarian investigative authorities into the territory of the Kingdom of Serbia.
The government of Austria-Hungary used this to declare war to Serbia, which soon escalated into the First World War.
According to the original plan of the assassination, there were six perpetrators.
Of these six, four did not do anything during the first pass of the imperial procession, when Nedeljko Čabrinović’s bomb missed the car with Ferdinand,
but lightly wounded Colonel Eric von Merizzi and Count Boos-Waldeck.
During the return of the imperial procession, Gavrilo Princip successfully assassinated the Archduke.
At the trial it was established that the assassins had no intention of killing Sophie Chotek.
The weapon that Princip used was a Belgian-made 7,65 ×17mm Fabrique Nationale model 1910 semi-automatic pistol
and apparently it was given to the members of Young Bosnia by Dragutin Dimitrijević - Apis.
At the time of the assassination, Gavrilo Princip was considered too young for the death penalty and so he was sentenced to 20 years of prison where he was tortured.
Today, Gavrilo Princip's grave is in the Heroes of St. Vitus Day chapel in Sarajevo.
The car, Gavrilo's gun and Franz Ferdinand's bloody uniform are in the Military Museum in Vienna.
The bullet that killed Ferdinand is displayed in the Konopište castle in the Czech Republic.
Gavrilo's prison sentence was served in the Czech Terezin, where he died of tuberculosis on April 28th, 1918, just a little before the end of WWI.
At the end, he was weakened by poor prison conditions and weighed only 40 kilograms (88lbs).
The assassination of Austrian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand was an historical event of tremendous consequence resulting in WWI,
the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire followed by the creation of new states –Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia,
and the reclaiming of significant territories by neighboring countries that Austria-Hungary and Turkey had occupied and annexed.
It would be an understatement to say that the only reason for the Great War was the killing of Ferdinand, as there were a number of other reasons and plans for war by the great powers.
Germany, for example, wanted to win back its lost colonies; there was a rivalry between France and England for supremacy in Europe
and both had a hostile attitude towards German demands for reclaiming its colonies; the desire for independence by small nations;
unresolved border issues of Germany, Italy, and Turkey with neighboring countries, etc. .
The killing of Ferdinand was just the spark that ignited the flame of war.
Gavrilo Princip was, no doubt, a conspirator and member of the secret organization Young Bosnia, a Serbian nationalist youth organization in occupied Bosnia.
This organization was protected and supplied by the Serbian Black Hand secret organization with the slogan "unite or die,"
which was common for similar radical organizations in the Balkans whose members aspired to the unification of the South Slavic peoples.
A former officer of the Serbian army who led the conspirators that killed King Aleksandar Obrenović and Queen Draga—
Dragutin Dimitrijević nicknamed Apis—had been the head of the organization since its founding in 1903
together with officers Ciganović and Tankosić.
Despite a lot of evidence and information about preparations for the assassination,
the Austro-Hungarian government took no serious action to prevent it.
And the Archduke Franz Ferdinand himself, raised in a very militaristic manner,
an excellent athlete and fencer in his youth and a passionate hunter, otherwise a brutal and crude man,
did not pay much attention to the information about the possible assassination.
A year earlier, there had also been an attempted assassination in Paris without consequences,
but his unpopularity and the serious threats did not phase him much.
Regarding his political attitudes, Ferdinand was one of the bigger Serb-haters in the dual monarchy.
Participation in the upcoming military exercises, which were organized by General Potiorek on the banks of the Drina river,
was a great opportunity to provoke the Serbian "peasants", as he called them in translation.
For him, Serbia was a country of bandits, and the only thing in it that was worthwhile
in his opinion, was the wild boar hunting grounds, about which people told him.
To liquidate this person for patriotic reasons, two days before the assassination
the group of conspirators in Sarajevo grew by three men who were supposed to give support to the main assassins.
On St. Vitus' day, June 28, 1914, on the way across the center of Sarajevo
from the hotel to the location of the formal troop review and beginning of the military exercises,
the assassins tried to approach the procession of cars,
but due to a big crowd only Nedeljko Čabrinović was able to throw two bombs.
They only lightly wounded Colonel Eric Von Merizzi and Count Von Boos-Waldeck,
but missed Ferdinand, who did not want to miss the rest of the parade.
A little later, due to the driver's mistake of taking the wrong route,
Gavrilo Princip was able to approach the car, pull the trigger, and fire three bullets,
one of which fatally wounded Ferdinand, and another by chance wounded his wife Sophie, which was not planned.
Ferdinand died within a few minutes on the way to the hospital
and his wife Sophie during an attempted operation in the hospital.
Gavrilo Princip was immediately arrested and within a few days all six assassins were arrested.
Not a single one of them died, although they all took cyanide pills,
which were given to them in the event of their arrest.
It is assumed that by standing too long, or in some other way, the pills lost their properties.
They all admitted to participation in the conspiracy but denied that they had intentions to kill Arch-Duchess Sophie.
When the assassination was carried out, Gavrilo Princip was 19 years old.
In the monarchy, the legal age of adulthood was 21. Princip was too young for the death penalty,
and so he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he was exposed to heavy torture.
He served his sentence in a Czech prison in the Terezin fortress, where he died at age 25 of tuberculosis on
April 28, 1918, a little before the end of WWI.