The Assassinations in Sarajevo and their effects

In the growing heat of a Balkan summer morning, on 28th June1914, shortly after 10.30am, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria and the Austro-Hungarian empire; together with his wife, the Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg, were touring Sarajevo, Bosnia, in an open topped car. Their motorcade had been attacked earlier that morning by a young Serbian man named as Nedeljko Čabrinović: the Serb had thrown a grenade at their car. However, the grenade missed the car and injured the occupants of the second vehicle in the motorcade. The Archduke's driver sped quickly away, on to the Governor's residence; from where, after recovering from the shock, Franz Ferdinand requested to go to the local hospital to see the injured occupants of the second car.

  As the Archduke's driver was reversing into a side street another young Serb, Gavrillo Princip, was sitting drinking coffee outside a cafe', on the opposite side of the street. Princip recognised the Archduke and his wife and seized his chance. Casually strolling across the narrow street, he drew out a pistol and shot the Arch Duchess Sophie in the abdomen, before shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the neck. Both the earlier bombing attack and the shootings were carried out by the same group of young Serbian nationalists. They were all young men who were violently opposed to the Habsburg, Austro-Hungarian, imperialist empire. As a result of the attack, both the Archduke and his wife, the Duchess Sophie, died within minutes of the shootings, through loss of blood. Members of the Serb assassination team all belonged to a shadowy, quasi-military, intelligence organisation called the 'Black Hand'. Each member of the secret black-hand organisation was known to come from a small group of, extremely nationalistic, Serbian military officers.