Attack of Sarajevo

The June 28th 1914, with Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip nationalist Serb, member of the group Young Bosnia (or Mlada Bosna ), keep silent the Archduke François-Ferdinand, heir to the empire Austro-Hungarian, and his wife, at the moment when them accession with the throne seemed imminent. The attack of Sarajevo was suddenly the event release of the First World War.

Historical and geopolitical context

Since 1878, the Bosnia-Herzégovine was occupied by the empire of Austria-Hungary, which annexed it in 1908. Badly lived by the populations Slavic in particular the Serbes which refused this occupation and wished the reunification with the Serbia or others Slavic country S. This resentment ends up leading to this Attentat.

The Austrian authorities chose inconsistently the June 28th, day of Vidovan (a important Religious holiday at Serb the orthodoxe, which celebrates the Saint-Guy), but also date birthday of the Bataille of Kosovo Polje which, in 1389 saw the defeat of Serb in front of the Turkish army and the annexation of their kingdom to the Ottoman Empire for more than four hundred and fifty years like dates from the visit of the archduke. This date also corresponded to the fourteenth wedding anniversary of the princely couple and the archduke heir wanted to benefit from this visit to appear publicly with his wife and to make him benefit from honors that the rules of the Imperial and Royal Maison did not enable him to receive at the court.

The circumstances of the voyage of inspection of François-Ferdinand following the army maneuvers organized in Bosnia-Herzégovine seem to have supported the assassins. The voyage of the Archduke Heir, General inspector of the Armies, was regarded by the Serb minority as a provocation. Bilinski, Minister for Finance of Monarchy, in load of the administration from Bosnia-Herzégovine, in Vienna, also refused to take account of the warning of the ambassador from Serbia to Vienna, Jovan Jovanovic, that an attack was in preparation. of aucuns close to the prince had also disadvised to him this voyage and even its former tutor, a priest, predicted " to him; an end forces which would precipitate the world in a general cataclysm " …

The order of prince de Montenuovo, Large-Master of the court, to withdraw the troop (40 000 men) of Sarajevo, with the reason that the duchess of Hohenberg not being family member Impériale and Royal could not receive the military honors, deprived the couple of the protection of the army.

Lastly, the error of route, at the time of the unexpected visit at the hospital where was neat the victims of the first attack which has occurred at the time of the arrival of the couple, obliged the archducal car to stop in the middle of crowd (the driver had not been informed of the orders of the archduke) and put the couple at range of shooting of the young person Gabriel Princip at one time, where confronted with the failure of their company, the young terrorists sought to move away from crowd.

All that let suppose that the assassination of François-Ferdinand arranged many people. The count the Tisza, Prime Minister of Hungary, was even suspected of having taken part there because with the advertisement of died of François-Ferdinand, who was frankly hostile for him, he exclaimed in full Parliament in Budapest: " the will of God was achieved! ". This suspicion seems however unfounded. It however gives an idea of the atmosphere of the time of before the '' Great War ''.

The plot

Young Bosnia , a group of anarchistic young people of Nationality S various, was equipped with models of Pistolet S of 1910, resulting from FN Herstal, and of bends S provided by the Black Main , a Secret society related to the Serb Gouvernement . The hand black was directed by the Serb person in charge of the secret service the colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević his name in the organization was " Apis ".

The degree of implication of the Black Main is disputed. Some estimate that it is this organization which was responsible for the attack, and which the members of Jeune Bosnia were only the executants. Others consider that Jeune Bosnia was ideologically very far away from the Black Main , and if little was tried out, that the Black Main was persuaded that the plot would never have succeeded. However, the majority are of agreement to say that the Black Main provided the Arme S and the Cyanure to the assassins.

Direct links between the Serb government and the action of the terrorist were never proven. There exists in fact of the Indice S which let think that the Serb government tried, in good faith, of choking the terrorist threats in Serbia, since it avoided causing the anger of the Austro-Hungarian government, after the by-effect of the Balkan wars. According to another Theory, the Okhrana would have taken part in the attack with the Black Main .

The relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in 1914 were good, Serb the Prime Minister, Nikola Pašić holding particularly with this good neighborhood, which was reproached to him by the partisans of a harder line panslave hostile with the Austrian presence in Balkans.

The assassination

Here still, no source makes it possible to determine with certainty what really occurred. The minutes of the lawsuit make it possible however to know how the plot was organized and put at execution. Left Belgrade, where they were exerted, the conspirators could cross the border without encumbers with the unquestionable complicity of agents to the service of Serbia and remain in Sarajevo a few days before the arrival of the princely couple.

The seven conspirators did not have any experience in the handling of the weapons, and it is only by one extraordinary succession of Coïncidence S that they arrived to their end. To 10 a.m. 15, the parade of six cars passed the first member of the group, Mehmedbašić, which tried to aim since the window of an upper floor, but he did not manage to obtain a good firing angle, and decided not to draw not to compromise the Mission. The second member, Nedeljko Čabrinović, launched a bomb (or a stick of Dynamite, according to certain reports/ratios) on the car of François-Ferdinand, but missed it: the prince had took the bomb in his hand had thrown it by ground; the Explosion destroyed the following car, wounding its passengers seriously, as well as a Policier and several people in crowd. Čabrinović swallowed its pill cyanide and jumped in the Rivière Miljacka. The procession hastened then in direction of the Town hall, and crowd panicked. The police force left Čabrinović the river, and this one was violently struck by crowd before being placed as a police custody. The cyanide pill which it had taken was old or of too weak proportioning, so that it had not had the discounted effect. Moreover, the river did not exceed 10cm depth, and it could not drown there. Among the other authors of the plot, some fled by hearing the explosion, supposing that the archduke had been killed.

The remaining conspirators did not on the occasion to act because of the sways in the crowd, and the attempt at attack was regarded by its authors as a failure.

However, the archduke decided to go to the Hôpital to return visit to the Victime S of the bomb of Čabrinović. During this time, Gavrilo Princip for which the prime motive of the attack was " revenge for all the sufferings that the Austria makes endure with the people " had gone in a surrounding shop to buy a Sandwich (because he had resigned himself, or then because he had believed wrongly that the archduke had died in the explosion), and he saw the car of François-Ferdinand which passed close to the Latin Pont, the prince wanting to obtain itself from the news of the wounded officer. Princip caught up with the car, then drew twice: the first ball crossed the edge of the car and struck the duchess of Hohenberg in the Abdomen. The second ball reached the archduke in the Cou. Both were led to the Résidence Gouverneur, where they died of their Blessure S fifteen minutes later.

Princip tried Suicide R, initially by introducing cyanide, then with its gun, but he vomits the Poison (what had also arrived at Nedeljko Čabrinović, which let think of the police force that the group had been made sell a poison too much weak, and the gun was torn off with its hands by a group of idlers before he had time to make use of it.

Consequences

During their Interrogation, Princip, Čabrinović, and the others did not reveal anything the conspiracy. The authorities estimated that the imprisonment was arbitrary, until one of the members, Danilo Ilić, during a banal paper control, takes fear, loses its control, and reveals all with the two agents which had challenged it, of which the fact that the weapons were provided by the Serb government.

The Austria-Hungary showed the Serbia assassination and, during the Council of the Crown of the July 7th 1914, posed a Ultimatum. One of the points of this ultimatum was particularly unrealizable, so that Serbia could not accept the whole of the conditions. Only, the count the Tisza opposed it.

The following day, July 8th 1914, it wrote a letter which warned the Emperor thus: " an attack against Serbia would bring most probably the intervention of Russia and a world war would be followed from there. "

The July 25th 1914, supported by Russia, the Serb government refuses the participation of Austrian police officers in the investigation into the Serb territory. The diplomatic relations between the two States are broken.

The July 28th 1914, Austria-Hungary declared a war " préventive" in Serbia, which, by the play of alliances, brought the First World War.

During the war, the Russian Révolution burst, then came the defeat austo-allemande and the fall from monarchies. Cruel and awkward the Treated of Versailles (1919) (" We lost peace " Clémenceau involved the come to power of the Nazis then the Second world war, the Cold war will say until the fall of the " block soviétique" at the end of the century and the war " civile" in… Bosnia-Herégovine… All history of the century changed by two shots: from Sarajevo 1914 in Sarajevo 1994.

In the Wiener Zeitung of the July 29th 1914, the Emperor and King François-Joseph declares on his subjects: " I very examined and very weighed; it is the quiet conscience which I engage on the way that my duty indicates to me. "

In spite of this official declaration always charged to reassure the people, other sources affirm that the emperor octogenarian would have signed the declaration of war while saying: " a preventive war, it is like a suicide by fear of dead the " …

In addition, according to the tradition, François-Joseph required of the pope Pie X to bless its armies. The Holy Father answered him: " I blessed only peace " …

All the members of the plot were condemned to the imprisonment, except Danilo Ilić, which was hung, being the only major one (in Austria-Hungary, the capital punishment could be applied only to condemned being at least 21 years old). Čabrinović died of the Tuberculose in prison. Princip would have been assassinated two months before the end of the First World War by its geôliers although he is declared also died of tuberculosis on April 28th, 1918…

Other theses of plot

In the international Re-examined of the secret societies, Mgr Ernest Jouin affirmed in 1912 that the death of the archduke was envisaged in advance by the cabins of freemason. Moreover, it implied that Cabrinović, Casimirović and Ciganović had solids bonds with freemasonry. This theory however is discussed.

References

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