A Wrong Turn, a Holy Cause, and Two Bullets
The Reverberation of the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 109 Years Later
Just try to imagine how history can be changed when the vehicle of a leading government official, committed to peace and democratic reform and his wife makes a wrong turn and runs into a fanatical religious nationalist, and two bullets kill both. Then try to imagine a situation when leaders of nations make fateful decisions, often in ways counter to their own interests that ultimately lead to a world war. Finally, imagine that happening when the leaders of those nations have militaries armed with nuclear weapons. With the exception of the last imagined situation that happened on June 27th, 1914.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was eager to leave Sarajevo. He had opposed the empire’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina when it occurred in 1908 as a “needless provocation of the South Slavs” and their Russian supporters; he knew that the action was “a diplomatic time bomb that could go off at any time.” He had come to Bosnia to help win over the loyalty of the resentful populace and, in a sense, to consecrate Austrian rule over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Franz Ferdinand
The visit included military maneuvers in the western part of the province, away from Serbia to be less provocative, as well as motorcades and official visits to political officials and cultural venues. The Archduke brought with him his beloved wife, Sophie. His marriage to her was looked upon with scorn by his father, Emperor Franz Josef I, and the royal family. Sophie, though a child of obscure Czech nobility she, and her family were too impoverished for the Hapsburgs; likewise, the relationship was scandalous because Sophie had been the lady in waiting to the Hapsburg archduchess who Franz was supposed to marry. He was forced to sign an “Oath of Renunciation” in which he declared that their children would be excluded from the imperial succession.
Last Meeting with Sarajevo Mayor and Religious leaders
The final day of the royal visit to the region was Sunday, June 28th. The date coincided with the signature of the oath of renunciation and a Serbian holy day, the anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389. In that battle, the Turks destroyed independent Serbia. However, it was and still is considered a symbol of national pride and resistance for Serbians, as a Serbia knight had killed Ottoman Sultan Murad I during the battle. Likewise, June 28th, 1914, was the celebration of St. Vitus Day or Vidovdan, the day set aside by the Serbian government and religious authorities as consecrated to all those who sacrificed their lives for the faith and the fatherland. For Serbian radials and nationalists, the establishment of a Greater Serbia and the liberation of Bosnia from Austria was a holy cause that they were willing to give their lives to achieve.
The visit and itinerary had been planned and published for months, and some Serbs began planning to assassinate the Archduke. Members of the militant-terrorist group the Black Hand and its Bosnian offshoot Narodna Odbrana assisted by Serbian military officers, developed plans. They helped the three conspirators, Gavrilo Princip, Nedjelko Chabrinovitch, and Trifko Grabezh, with travel, weapons, and training to accomplish their mission. Once across the border and in Bosnia, they linked up with other conspirators, where they planned the assassination attempt.
By the final night, Franz was ready to leave and was heard to say, “Thank God this Bosnian trip is over.” He would have left with the Austrian Chief of the General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf but stayed because he was “warned that breaking off the Sunday program would damage Austria’s prestige in Bosnia.”
The next morning was uneventful until the Archduke’s motorcade was attacked by a local conspirator who threw a bomb that deflected off the Archduke and his car and blew up under the next car in the motorcade at 10 a.m. The Archduke stopped to check on the wounded and proceeded to the city hall mayor and Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious leaders. It was an awkward meeting considering the attempt on his life. Following it, he and his party left first to visit the military hospital where the wounded had been taken and then to a final luncheon, a last-minute change to the itinerary, skipping a museum visit. However, the word of the route change did not reach the first two vehicles made a wrong turn, and in the confusion as the motorcade attempted to reverse course, the Archduke’s vehicle stopped for a few seconds, not more than 8 feet from Princip, just after 11 a.m. The Bosnian was surprised by the sudden opportunity and quickly fired two shots from his Browning FN Model 1910 pistol, one which struck Franz in the neck and the other which struck Sophie in the abdomen, and by 11:30, both were dead.
Gavrilo Princip, after his arrest.
Unfortunately, Princip killed the one man who could have prevented all that followed.
In the days and weeks that following his death, the nations of Europe, each for their reasons, negotiated, threatened, and finally mobilized for war. The war destroyed the political order of Europe that had existed since the end of the Napoleonic wars, killing nearly 17 million people and wounding 20 million more. The peace that followed was fraught with peril and followed by a second, even more, destructive world war in which an estimated 50 to 80 million people were killed and millions more wounded.
The consequences of those wars and the following Cold War are with us even today. Among the empires that died in the First World War was the Ottoman Empire, whose remains were divided between the English and French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. That agreement’s arbitrary and indiscriminate redrawing of national boundaries is a large part of the reason for the current unrest in the Middle East, especially the civil war in Syria.
A wrong turn and two bullets resulted in a century of war, desolation, and carnage. Otto von Bismarck said that “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” The results of the war caused by “some silly thing in the Balkans” are still felt, including the psychological and spiritual effects on peoples and nations. Barbara Tuchman wrote of the period after the First World War: “An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust.”
On the 29th of September 2022, leaders of the world gathered at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Second as they had at the funeral of her Great Grandfather, King Edward the Seventh, on May 20th, 1910. Though 45 members of Royal Houses, and over 140 heads of State or Government Government were present, the pageantry could not compare to the funeral of her Great Grandfather in its historical importance. Edward the Seventh’s death was the end of an era, even if few people at the time understood. Tuchman wrote:
“The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”
Four years later, a war that most people, including the great Kings, Emperors, and world leaders, thought would be short, sharp, and decisive. It wasn’t, and by its end, only King George the Fifth of Great Britain remained of the most powerful monarchs of Europe.
Nicholas the Second of Russia was dead, and his country was dismembered by the war and in the midst of a brutal civil war, which Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks would win, forming the Soviet Union. But the empire lost Poland, Finland, and other regions, including Ukraine, with the exception of Poland and Finland the Soviet Union succeeded. The Soviet empire ruled with great brutality costing tens of millions of the lives of its citizens, without counting the losses of the Second World War collapsed in 1990, and its last leader Mikhail Gorbachev faced a failed coup and resigned four months later. The Russian Federation which followed enjoyed a brief period of democracy but the true power was that of Oligarchs, mostly former Soviet officials who became rich and powerful. In May of 2000, a former mid-grade Soviet KGB officer, Vladimir Putin was elected President, and over two decades became a dictator. His rule is now endangered by a coup by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, which includes a mercenary arm he used in his revolt during Putin’s flailing war against Ukraine.
Emperor Franz Joseph the First, the elderly ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would die of old age, and his successor, Emperor Charles the First abdicated in the face of defeat and revolution, dying of pneumonia and two heart attacks at the age of 34 while exiled to Madeira, Portugal. His empire was fractured. Austria and Hungary were reduced in size, and from the remains of the empire the countries of Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, and Slovakia; and Yugoslavia, now Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia (which was independent before World War One), Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. Other parts were ceded to Poland and Romania.
The Ottoman Empire also collapsed in late 1918. The Sultan remained in power until overthrown by Mustafa Kemal, “Atatürk”. The founder of what is now Turkey. The empire was divided by the British and French into Syria, occupied by the French, Iraq and Palestine occupied by the British, the Hejaz, now Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and several small states in the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar. The number of wars, conflicts, and civil wars fought in the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire are in the dozens.
Finally, Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, Emperor of Germany and the King of Prussia was forced into exile when faced with impending disaster at the front, revolution at home, including much of the Army and Navy agreed to an armistice and abdicated his throne. Given sanctuary in the Netherlands, he died there in June 1941, never having returned to Germany. The German Empire lost all of its overseas colonies in Africa and the Pacific. Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France, and parts of Prussia to the newly restored Poland, which also was made up of territory ceded by Russia and Austria-Hungary. It also lost the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Following the Treaty of Versailles it was stripped of its military power, forced to pay massive reparations, and made to take sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Rather than blame the Kaiser and the men who launched Germany into war by supporting Austro-Hungary, the leaders of the Weimar Republic were blamed. Eventually, it fell and Adolf Hitler took power leading the world into another even more destructive war. After that Germany was divided and once again carved up. It existed in the form of two countries, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Germany), and the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany) divided by the fortified inter-German border. Its Capitol, Berlin was divided into four occupation zones, and West Berlin was surrounded by the Berlin Wall. It was the epicenter of the Cold War. Millions of NATO and Soviet Warsaw Pact soldiers waited for the inevitable war on the North German Plain and the Fulda Gap. Despite a few close calls, that war never came, and Germany was reunited after the Wall came down.
Now we have to ask the question of what will happen in Russia and Eastern Europe in the weeks, months, and years to come, and how will it affect Europe and the world. One can also wonder what will come in the aftermath of the death of Queen Elizabeth the Second, especially in the nations of the British Commonwealth.
It is sobering to think and reflect on how a wrong turn, a holy cause and just two bullets can bring about so much death, destruction and instability.
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Fear that as then we perch on the cliff over fatal ramifications