The Two Bombs and Six Shots Fired in Sarajevo on the Morning of 28 June 1914 by Six Bosnian Serb Students That Started the First World War

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne and would have succeeded the aged emperor Franz Joseph (then 84). He had been making an official visit to the Austro-Hungarian provincial capital of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The province had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908 from the Ottoman Empire and was resented by the Serb-majority population, who wanted union with the adjacent independent Kingdom of Serbia.

The radical pan-Serbian nationalist organisation Young Bosnia had been planning attacks on senior Austro-Hungarian officials for years. The Franz Ferdinand visit was a opportunity. The Young Bosnia operational leader Danilo Ilić had recruited six volunteers — five Bosnian Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim — armed with bombs and pistols supplied by the Serbian military intelligence organisation Black Hand.

The six were stationed along the planned motorcade route through central Sarajevo on the morning of 28 June 1914.

The first attempt

The Archduke and his wife Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg were travelling in an open-topped car. The first attacker the motorcade passed was Muhamed Mehmedbašić, who had a bomb concealed under his coat. He lost his nerve and did not throw it. The second was Vaso Čubrilović (16 years old), who also failed to act.

The third was Nedeljko Čabrinović (19), who threw a hand grenade at the Archduke’s car at 10:10 a.m. The grenade bounced off the folded canopy of the car and exploded under the following vehicle, wounding approximately 20 bystanders and several officers in the next car. The Archduke’s car accelerated away. Čabrinović swallowed a cyanide capsule and jumped into the Miljacka river. The cyanide was old and produced only vomiting; the river was shallow and only about 30 cm deep. He was arrested within minutes.

The Archduke proceeded to City Hall for the planned official reception. He confronted the mayor mid-speech: “I come here on a visit and I am received with bombs. It is outrageous!”

The wrong street

The motorcade then started again toward the planned next destination. The Archduke had decided to alter the route to visit the wounded officers from the bomb attack at the Sarajevo hospital. The drivers had not been told about the change.

The lead driver, Leopold Lojka, took the originally planned turn from Appel Quay onto Franz Joseph Street. The Archduke’s car turned in behind him. General Oskar Potiorek — the Bosnian governor riding in the Archduke’s car — realised the wrong route had been taken and ordered Lojka to stop and reverse.

The Archduke’s car stopped, in reverse gear, approximately five metres from the doorway of Schiller’s Delicatessen at the corner of the Latin Bridge.

Gavrilo Princip — 19 years old, sitting at a small table outside the delicatessen having coffee, having given up on the assassination after the failed bomb attack — was looking directly at the Archduke’s car at point-blank range.

He stood up, walked the five metres to the car, drew his FN Model 1910 semi-automatic pistol, and fired twice. The first round hit Sophie in the abdomen. The second hit Franz Ferdinand in the throat.

The two were rushed to the governor’s residence. Sophie was already dead. Franz Ferdinand was reportedly still conscious. His last reported words to his wife were “Sopherl, Sopherl, sterbe nicht. Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder” (“Sophie dear, Sophie dear, don’t die. Stay alive for our children”). He died approximately 11 minutes after the shooting, at about 11 a.m.

Princip attempted suicide with a second cyanide capsule and a pistol shot. Both attempts failed — the cyanide was again old, and bystanders restrained him before he could fire on himself. He was 19, too young under Austro-Hungarian law to receive the death penalty.

What followed

Austria-Hungary delivered a ultimatum to Serbia on 23 July 1914 with terms designed to be unacceptable. Serbia accepted nine of the ten demands. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914.

The European alliance system activated within days. Russia mobilised on 30 July in support of Serbia. Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August. France mobilised the same day. Germany invaded Belgium on 4 August to outflank French defences. Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August in response to the violation of Belgian neutrality.

The First World War, which had been triggered by the shooting at the Latin Bridge five weeks earlier, ran for four years and three months. Approximately 20 million people died (military and civilian combined). Four imperial dynasties were destroyed — the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Ottomans.

Princip was tried in October 1914 and sentenced to the maximum permitted under Austro-Hungarian juvenile law — 20 years. He was imprisoned at Terezín fortress in Bohemia. He developed tuberculosis in prison and had his right arm amputated in 1917 for skeletal tuberculosis. He died at Terezín on 28 April 1918, aged 23.

The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo is still there. A small plaque marks the spot where Princip stood. It has been replaced multiple times — the Yugoslav 1953 plaque praised Princip as a national liberation hero; the 1992 post-Bosnian-independence plaque calls him an assassin; the current 2014 centenary plaque names the event without taking political position. The Schiller’s Delicatessen building is now the Sarajevo Museum 1878-1918.