![]() ![]() “They don’t understand what this conversation’s about, and nobody bothers to translate for them.”Īs a result, the first car turned onto Franz Joseph Street, followed by the second car, carrying Franz Ferdinand, Sophie and Potiorek. “They’re talking about this in German, and the driver of the first car is Czech, and so is the driver of the second car,” Clark told NPR. Unfortunately, the drivers didn’t pick up on this changed itinerary. The Czech Driver Couldn’t Understand the DirectionsĪfter Franz Ferdinand made his own speech and tended to some official business, he wanted to visit the injured adjutant in the hospital before leaving town.įor security reasons, it was decided that the motorcade should proceed out of the city via the Appel Quay, rather than take its planned route along Franz Joseph Street and into the narrow streets of Sarajevo’s bazaar district. Instead, the group continued on to Sarajevo’s city hall, where they met with dignitaries including the mayor, who failed to alter his prepared speech about the happy and “enthusiastic” greeting Sarajevo’s citizens were offering to the archduke.Īs Clark recounted in his book, Franz Ferdinand furiously interrupted the mayor’s speech, exclaiming, “I come here as your guest and your people greet me with bombs!” before his wife Sophie was able to calm him down. He was a very irritable man, and he said ‘don’t be ridiculous.’” “That was proposed by some members of his entourage,” said Clark, “but he hated being told what to do. “We’re entitled to ask ourselves why, at this point, the archduke didn’t simply call the visit off,” Christopher Clark, a professor of modern European history at the University of Cambridge and author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War, told NPR’s All Things Considered in 2014. Though Čabrinović took his cyanide and threw himself into the nearby river, the poison didn’t work, and the river was too low for him to drown, so he was quickly arrested. The driver managed to accelerate out of the way, but the bomb hit the vehicle behind, injuring several people, including the adjutant to General Oskar Potiorek, governor of Bosnia. They had strapped explosives to their bodies, carried loaded revolvers and were all equipped with cyanide so they could commit suicide rather than be caught.Īs the motorcade rolled along the Appel Quay, a major street running through the center of Sarajevo, a Bosnian Serb named Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a bomb toward the archduke’s car. ![]() On the morning of June 28, seven young Bosnian Serbs with ties to a Serbian ultra-nationalist group called the Black Hand placed themselves along that route. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie traveled in an open car, and the route their motorcade would take through Sarajevo had been made public well beforehand. Their First Attempt at Assassination Failedĭespite warnings of possible terrorist attacks during the visit to Bosnia, few official security precautions were taken. Vitus’ Day, the anniversary of the Serbian defeat in Kosovo by Ottoman forces in 1389, and this would be the first celebration of the occasion since Serbia had won back Kosovo in the Second Balkan War.įor their part, Serbian nationalists saw the archduke’s visit to Sarajevo on this of all days as an unforgivable insult-and they sought to strike back. June 28 was a particularly significant date for Serbia: It was St. June 28 Was a Momentous Date for Serbians In the years leading up to WWI, a series of agreements between the powers of Europe helped determine where and when battlelines were drawn. ![]() By choosing to hold its military exercises in Sarajevo in June 1914, and to send the heir to the throne to oversee them, Austria-Hungary intended to make a show of force to warn Serbia against any further expansion and aggression. Wary of Serbia’s ambitions for territorial expansion, Austria-Hungary had sought and received assurances from Germany that it would stand behind the dual monarchy in case of war with Serbia (and Serbia’s powerful ally, Russia). Home to a large Slavic population, Bosnia and Herzegovina had nationalist ambitions of their own, but nearby Serbia wanted to incorporate them into a pan-Slavic empire. In addition to being the heir to his uncle’s throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was also inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which had decided to hold its summer military exercises in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.īack in 1908, the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, a region that had previously been under the control of the Ottoman Empire. ![]()
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