June 28, 1914 marked the day that would turn the world upside down, this is the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were murdered in Sarajevo. They were severally wounded by Gavrilo Princip a 19 year old from Grahovo, who was a group of six assassins ( five Serbians and one Bosnian. The original political objective of the assassination was to essentially cut off Austria-Hungary’s South Slav provinces, so they could be claimed by Yugoslavia. This was a plot by the Black Hand secret society, which would often practice and promote terrorist methods to promote the freedom and liberation of Serbians outside of Serbia.
The marriage between the Archduke Franz and his wife had seemed to be more of an alliance than a marriage, and it turned out that Gavrilo Princip had fired two revolver shots, some by standers said that Sophie was seen almost shielding Franz with her body. Both shots hit, and a few short minuets later they both passed away. Some people conspire and say that this may have been an inside job that had been planned out most of the time, since security arrangements in Sarajevo were limited, the local military commander who at the time was General Micheal von Appel proposed that the route should be lined with troops. This seems like a very good and safe idea, but the general insisted that this would offend the loyal and local citizens, this left the protection for the visiting party was left accordingly to the Sarajevo police, to whom about 60 officers were on duty during the time of the visit on Sunday. This made this parade the easiest way to take out the Archduke, The parade crowd was loaded with the six different assassins and they each were in prime position to make a move, the first assassin went by the name of Danilo and was positioned in front of a garden to the right of the road. Once the motorcade passed he failed to act, he was armed with a bomb and a pistol. He was accompanied by Vaso who was positioned on the other side of the road, he too was armed with a pistol and a bomb but whenever the motorcade passed he did not act. Further down the road was the third assassin who’s name was Nedeljko, he was in some cover right beside the Miljacka River and was only armed with a grenade. The time was 10:10 a.m whenever Franz Ferdinands car approached and Nedeljko successfully threw the grenade, and the grenade bounced off of the folded down back of the Archdukes convertible cover and rolled into the street. The grenade went off underneath the car that was following the car carrying Franz and his wife, it went off and put the car out of commission leaving a crater in the road and wounding 16-20 civilians. Once seeing he didn’t succeed in the mission Nedeljko swallowed a cyanide pill jumped into the Miljacka River to avoid capture. The only catch was that the pill that he swallowed did not due much other than induce vomiting and since the river was so low the police found him and dragged him out of the water and was severely beaten before being taken into custody. With the first three attempts failing, the group knew that they had to act quickly as the rest of the motorcade quickly drove to the town hall leaving the disabled car in the dust. Three of the men failed to act due to the speed at which the parade passed them, whenever the parade arrived at the town hall for the scheduled reception, Franz Ferdinand showed very understandable amounts of nerves and stress with knowing that the bomb was meant for him. They arrived during the mayor of Sarajevos speech, this is when Franz Ferdinand had a sudden outburst in front of the crowd and told the mayor “Mr. Mayor, I came here on a visit and I greeted with bombs. It is outrageous.” He then suddenly became calm said to the mayor, “now you may speak.” Once the Mayor was done with his own speech, Franz had to wait on his own speech to be brought to him, he then proceeded to read the speech with blood dripping from his ear from the shrapnel of the bombing attempt earlier in the day. After the speech concluded the Archduke and the rest of his party discussed what the next move would be, they came to an agreement that the couple would wait at the town hall until soldiers could be brought into the city for the original idea of lining the streets. The couple also gave up on their plan of showing love for the wounded in the accident and going to visit them in the hospital. At 10:45 a.m Franz and his wife decided to get into the car again, this time the General of Sarajevo rode on the left hand running board of the car to attempt to protect the couple from the riverside of the street. The route had been going very smoothly until Princip had learned that the first assassination attempt had been unsuccessful, he quickly made his way to a food shop near the Latin Bridge. Upon arrival the first two cars of the motorcade had passed and had taken a sudden right onto a unknown side street that wasn’t in the original route, it is at this point whenever the driver of the car that the couple is riding in hits the brakes and stops to figure out where to go. Princip finally gets his opportunity and walks out to the car and shoots Franz Ferdinand and his wife at point blank range. Princip immediately tries to shoot himself, but was seized and arrested before he could fire another shot.
All of the men were caught, those in custody of Austro-Hungarian government were tried together and were put into prison. Anti Serbian rallies soon broke out within the following hours of the assassination and continued until order could be restored by military force. On the night of the assassination, country wide riots broke out as well as Anti-Serb programs and demonstrations were also organized int different parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one part of the country in particular which was modern day Bosnia. Sarajevo continued to become more and more violent as the police did nothing to stop it, two Serbians were killed on the first day and many were attacked. One short month later on July 27, 1914 Austria- Hungary declares war on Serbia, which effectively set one of the most deadly wars in history in motion.