![]() ![]() ![]() Several assassins lined the parade route, and one of them was ultimately successful. Behind them was a car containing Austrian military officers.Ī dispute over the appropriateness of military uniforms kept the Austrian army from lining the parade route, and the local police was thin on the ground. The royal couple rode in an open-topped car. The parade route was announced publicly.įranz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, rode in the third car, behind a car containing security officers and a car containing the Sarajevo mayor and chief of police. The plan was for the royal procession to wind from the train station to City Hall, for a royal welcome, and then to the military parade grounds, so the Archduke could inspect the troops. Ilic planned for seven men in all to attempt to kill Franz Ferdinand.Īs a show of force, the Archduke ordered a parade through the heart of Sarajevo. Black Hand members involved in the plot smuggled guns through a clandestine tunnel from Belgrade to Sarajevo, hiding them first in a big box of sugar and then in a suitcase under a sofa at the house of the mother of one of the conspirators. The Archduke had announced the date of his visit well in advance. The assassination was a coordinated plan. He and his wife arrived in Sarajevo on that day after concluding a royal visit to Germany and a meeting with Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nonetheless, Franz Ferdinand chose that day to inspect Austrian troop maneuvers in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. June 28 was a day of nationalist pride in Serbia, marking a Serbian military victory dating back to the 14th Century. (Along about this time, the Black Hand came under the umbrella of Serbia's chief of military intelligence, a man named Apis, who helped pave the way for the assassination to succeed.) Soon, the organizers expanded the plan to include the heir to the imperial throne, Franz Ferdinand. The annexation of Bosnia fuelled the Black Hand's anger, and a subgroup led by Danilo Ilic embarked on a plan to kill the governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek. A group of Serbian secret military operatives calling themselves the Black Hand had formed just after the turn of the century, with the goal of promoting a united Slavic nation (perhaps called Greater Serbia), along the lines of a united Italy (formed in 1870) and a united Germany (formed in 1871). Tensions were fierce with neighboring Serbia, which had ambitions of its own (resulting in part in the Balkan Wars of 19). The Austro-Hungarian Empire had grown throughout the latter part of the 19th Century and early 20th Century, annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 and further dividing the larger area's Slavic population. These shootings touched off a series of events that led to World War I. On June 28, 1914, a Bosnian nationalist assassinated Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo. The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ![]()
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