The Sarajevo Assassination and the July Crisis

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne after the deaths of his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 and his father Archduke Karl Ludwig in 1896, made an official visit to Sarajevo, capital of the recently annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, on June 28, 1914 - a date that coincided with the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, of profound symbolic significance for Serbian nationalism. A group of six young conspirators linked to Young Bosnia, armed with weapons supplied by the Black Hand, positioned themselves along the motorcade route; a first bomb thrown by Nedeljko Čabrinović failed to reach the Archduke, but after a mistaken change of route, Gavrilo Princip found himself beside the stopped vehicle and fired at close range, mortally wounding both Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg. Princip was arrested at the scene; too young under Austro-Hungarian law to be sentenced to death, he died in prison in 1918 of tuberculosis.