A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

882 Ch. 22 • The Great War

nationalists assassinated the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria.

Europe’s diplomatic house of cards collapsed and the Great War began.

Assassination in Sarajevo

Archduke Francis Ferdinand was heir to the Habsburg throne. His first love

was his commoner wife, Sophie; his second, hunting—he bragged of having

killed 6,000 stags in his lifetime and of having bagged 2,763 seagulls on a

single day. The archduke was not considered particularly pro-German, and

probably had more sympathy for the problems of the South Slavs than any

member of the royal family. Hungarians disliked him, fearing that when he

came to the throne, he might eventually grant the South Slavs the same sta­

tus as the Austrians and Hungarians. But many Serb nationalists would

accept nothing less than an expanded independent Slavic state, or what they

called Greater Serbia.

On June 28, 1914, Francis Ferdinand and his wife were on an inspection

tour of the army in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. As the archduke’s

motorcade approached the center of the city, a small bomb exploded under

the archduke’s car. The motorcade continued to the town hall, where the

archduke expressed his indignation at the attempt on his life. When the

motorcade departed, the drivers had not been informed of a change in route

chosen to avoid the tangle of streets in central Sarajevo. When the first sev­

eral vehicles began to turn into a narrow street, the military governor ran

ahead, ordering their drivers to back up. Gavrilo Princip (1895-1918), a

young member of the Black Hand Serb nationalist group, saw his chance, as

On an inspection tour of the army in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, Archduke Francis

Ferdinand and his wife hathe in a warm welcome. They were assassinated a few

hours later.