As any schoolboy or schoolgirl knows, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in Sarajevo June 28, 1914 was the match that touched off the conflagration of world war
one. This channel, the Great War, follows World War One week by week exactly 100 years later.
First,
I’d like to talk a little about Franz Ferdinand himself, so here’s a very brief bio, but
there are loads of books about him if you want to learn more.
first of He was born in 1863, one of Austria’s 70
archdukes- it wasn’t called Austria-Hungary yet. He became very wealthy just before he
reached his teens when his cousin died and he was chosen to inherit a vast estate. Another
death in 1889 changed his destiny enormously- the suicide of his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf.
This left Ferdinand’s father heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, but he immediately
renounced his position, leaving Franz Ferdinand next in line to rule the empire. He was still
in this position when he died, by which time emperor Franz Josef was 84 years old and Ferdinand
was 50.
If you read pretty much any bio, long or short, of Franz Ferdinand, you’ll discover that
not a whole lot of people actually liked him. Well, except his wife, the Duchess Sophia.
She was a Bohemian aristocrat, but without actual royal blood, so the imperial house
made certain that neither Sophia nor any of her children could inherit the throne.
This also meant that they weren’t much accepted by the Austrian aristocracy, in spite of his
position as the next emperor, and a lot of people went out of their way to treat the
Archduke and duchess like crap. One other thing that every bio is sure to mention is
Ferdinand’s passion for hunting- he apparently recorded over 250,000 creatures killed in
his 50 years on earth.
I suppose that’s really neither here nor there, but what IS here AND there are Franz
Ferdinand’s beliefs. He was very conservative and...
let’s just say “unenlightened” to be polite.
He hated the Hungarians, he thought the Slavs were less than humans, and he actually referred
to Serbs as “pigs”.
He was also very strongly Catholic, which carried with it the anti-Jewish anti-Jesuit
baggage of the times. He did love his wife with a great passion, though... and the preservation
of the Austrian Empire, and THAT is something we’ll come back to in a few minutes.
Before that, let’s meet his assassin; Garvilo Princip.
Princip was a member of the Young Bosnians, one of several violent secret societies in
the Balkans, and one who decided to kill Franz Ferdinand when he announced his June visit
to Bosnia in March 1914.
Okay, so in May, Princip and two associates went to Belgrade, Serbia, where they were
provided with four pistols and six bombs by the Black Hand,
and Princip had some
shooting practice in a city park.
That’s not especially relevant, I just thought I’d like to point that out. People had shooting
practice in city parks back then.
So, at the end of May Princip and company took an eight-day journey to Sarajevo, planning
to kill the Archduke. It’s important to note that the Austrian authorities and the
Archduke himself were aware of the danger of some sort of murder attempt, since these
sort of things were pretty commonplace in the empire and especially in the Balkans.
Here’s a quote from Ferdinand the day he began his journey to Sarajevo and his car
overheated,
"Our journey starts with an extremely promising omen. Here our car burns and down there they
will throw bombs at us.”
So... the evening before they were supposed to arrive in Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand and
Sophia surprised everyone by turning up early, just on impulse, and had a really nice time
wandering around the town, which was a pretty exotic place back then, and later that evening
came one of the great foreshadowing moments of all time; a member of the Bosnian parliament
who had urged Ferdinand and Sophia to cancel the whole trip for reasons of safety, was
presented to Sophia, and she said this:
female voice over or actor’s voice over image of Sophia: “Things do not always turn
out the way you say they will. Wherever we have been, everyone, down to the last Serb,
has greeted us with such great friendliness, politeness, and true warmth, that we are very
happy with our visit.”
So far, so good. Then the guy, who was named Sunaric, answered,
“Your Highness, I pray to God that when I have the honor of meeting you again tomorrow
night you can repeat those words.” Really.
Then they had a big banquet that night, and late the next morning- coincidentally their
14th wedding anniversary- the archducal motorcade left Sarajevo station.
No fewer than seven Young Bosnian hitmen were deployed on the town’s bridges, one of which
the Archduke had to cross. One of the Young Bosnians threw a bomb at his car, but it bounced
off the hood before it exploded, wounding two of the Archduke’s men. The motorcade
drove on to the town hall and they listened to a bunch of the usual speeches, and then
after that, Franz Ferdinand changed his plans. He decided to visit the men who’d been hurt
by the bomb to see if they were okay, so he wanted to go toward the hospital. But there
was a lot of confusion over the new route and who’d been told what and who hadn’t,
so when the Archduke’s driver turned off the Appel Quay, the general sharing Ferdinand’s
car told the driver no, no- back up and continue on Appel Quay...
...so the driver stopped the car, which had no functioning reverse gear, right next to
where Gavrilo Princip was standing.
So Princip raised his pistol and fired twice from only a few
feet away. Sophie died instantly, and Franz Ferdinand’s last words were “Sophie, Sophie,
don’t die- stay alive for our children.” He died shortly after.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it that this whole enterprise could have possibly
succeeded. It was so incredibly amateurish, and had the Austrian authorities taken any
precautions whatsoever... well, I mean, think about it, there are loads of people who think
the Black Hand had more to do with it, but you’d think they’d plan a little better,
or heck, plan AT ALL.
Anyhow, here were the immediate results: word of the assassination spread instantly throughout
Europe, and in Bosnia by the end of July more than 5,000 Serbs had been jailed, many of
whom were later hanged when the war broke out. Princip was put in prison, being 27 days
to young to receive the death penalty under Austrian law. Now, there were one or two European
leaders who were seriously worried about the political consequences of the act, but most
of Europe reacted by thinking it was more of the same- the usual Balkan business, another
Balkan killing. There was very little mourning, even in Vienna, for the unloved Franz Ferdinand,
and his funeral service only lasted 15 minutes, but there was one thing that became apparent
only years later....
You see, Princip, or the Serbs, or the Black Hand, or whoever you like to say was behind
the killing, really really really got the wrong guy.
Franz Ferdinand, for all his talk about Serbs being pigs, or Russian autocracy being a good
model for the future, for all his backward and outdated beliefs, had strong opinions
on two very important things; 1) in contrast to most of the empire, he was absolutely against
any war with Russia, and stated repeatedly that he would do anything in his power to
prevent it, and 2) since he put the empire above his personal beliefs, and to make the
empire work once again, he was sympathetic to the idea of making the bi-partite state
of Austria-Hungary into a tri-partite state of Austria, Hungary, and a union of the Slavic
peoples as the third part of the empire.
So when a Serb killed Franz Ferdinand, it was a killing that was not only against Serbian
interests, but since the Austrian Empire used the killing as a justification to invade Serbia,
even if it meant war with Russia-
Princip killed the one and only person in the empire who was determined and able to
prevent that war- Franz Ferdinand.
That was number 3 of our Great War Prelude to war Special. Now if you missed the first two episodes
you can klick here to watch both episode 1 and episode 2