who assassinated franz ferdinand and why

#Who assassinated franz ferdinand and why free#

Serbia's monarchs, at the time from the royal House of Obrenović that maintained close relations with Austria-Hungary, were content to reign within the borders set by the treaty. Under this same treaty, the Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, the United Kingdom, France, the German Empire, Italy, and the Russian Empire) gave official recognition to the Principality of Serbia as a fully sovereign state, which four years later transformed into a kingdom under Prince Milan IV Obrenović who thus became King Milan I of Serbia. Under the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman Vilayet of Bosnia, while the Ottoman Empire retained official sovereignty. Princip's legacy was re-evaluated following the breakup of Yugoslavia, and public opinion of him in the successor states is largely divided along ethnic lines. Much of what is known about the assassinations comes from these two trials and related records. Five of the older prisoners were sentenced to be hanged.īlack Hand members were arrested and tried before a Serbian court in Salonika in 1917 on fabricated charges of high treason the Black Hand was disbanded and three of its leaders were executed. Princip was found guilty of murder and high treason too young to be executed, he was sentenced to twenty years in jail, while the four other attackers also received jail terms. All six assassins, except Mehmedbašić, were under twenty at the time of the assassination while the group was dominated by Bosnian Serbs, four of the indictees were Bosnian Croats, and all of them were Austro-Hungarian citizens, none from Serbia.

In total twenty-five people were indicted. The assassins and key members of the clandestine network were tried in Sarajevo in October 1914. The assassins were given access to the same clandestine network of safe-houses and agents that Malobabić used for the infiltration of weapons and operatives into Austria-Hungary. Tankosić provided bombs and pistols to the assassins and trained them in their use. The assassination team was helped by the Black Hand, a Serbian secret nationalist group support came from Dragutin Dimitrijević, at the time chief of the military intelligence section of the Serbian general staff, as well as from Major Vojislav Tankosić and Rade Malobabić, a Serbian intelligence agent.

The assassination precipitated the July Crisis which led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia and the start of World War I.

#Who assassinated franz ferdinand and why free#

The political objective of the assassination was to free Bosnia and Herzegovina of Austria-Hungarian rule and establish a common South Slav (' Yugoslav') state. Princip was part of a group of six Bosnian assassins together with Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović and Trifko Grabež coordinated by Danilo Ilić all but one were Bosnian Serbs and members of a student revolutionary group that later became known as Young Bosnia. They were shot at close range while being driven through Sarajevo, the provincial capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, formally annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. The two unconscious bodies were carried into the building where their death was soon established.Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated on 28 June 1914 by Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip. This ceased on arrival at the governor’s residence. Then came a brief pause followed by a convulsive rattle in his throat, caused by a loss of blood. He answered me quite distinctly, “It is nothing!” His face began to twist somewhat but he went on repeating, six or seven times, ever more faintly as he gradually lost consciousness, “It’s nothing!”

Stay alive for the children!” At that, I seized the Archduke by the collar of his uniform, to stop his head dropping forward and asked him if he was in great pain. Then I heard His Imperial Highness say, “Sophie, Sophie, don’t die. I had no idea that she too was hit and thought she had simply fainted with fright. As I was pulling out my handkerchief to wipe the blood away from his mouth, the Duchess cried out to him, “For God’s sake! What has happened to you?” At that, she slid off the seat and lay on the floor of the car, with her face between his knees. Count Franz von Harrach was in the motor car during the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and later gave a written account:Īs the car quickly reversed, a thin stream of blood spurted from His Highness’s mouth onto my right check.