There’s just one problem: the archduke’s chauffeur, a stranger to Sarajevo, gets lost. When the heir gets back into his limousine, though, he decides on a change of plan-he’ll call at the hospital to visit the men injured in the grenade blast.
It’s one of Sarajevo’s smartest shopping destinations, just a few yards from the bustling through road known as Appel Quay.Īs Princip queues to buy a sandwich, Franz Ferdinand is leaving the town hall. One of them, Gavrilo Princip, heads for Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen, on Franz Joseph Street. Disconsolate, the remaining assassins disperse, their chance apparently gone. Franz Ferdinand is hurried off to the town hall, where he is due to meet with state officials. The bombing throws the rest of the day’s plans into disarray. The cyanide is past its sell-by date, and the river is just four inches deep. To avoid capture, Cabrinovic drains a vial of cyanide and throws himself into a nearby river-but his suicide bid fails. Although several officers in that car are hurt, Franz Ferdinand remains uninjured. It bounces off the limo and into the road, where it explodes under the next vehicle in the motorcade. But the grenade is an old one, with a 10-second fuse. The first to strike is Nedeljko Cabrinovic, who lobs a hand grenade toward Franz Ferdinand’s open touring car. Their opportunity comes when it is announced that Franz Ferdinand will be making a state visit to the provincial capital, Sarajevo.Īrmed with bombs and pistols supplied by Serbian military intelligence, seven conspirators position themselves at intervals along the archduke’s route. A handful of young Bosnian-born Serbs decide to strike a blow for the integration of their people into a Greater Serbia by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne. It is the summer of 1914, and Bosnia has just become part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The "X" marks the spot where Princip stood to fire into the Archduke's open limo. Moritz Schiller's delicatessen on Franz Joseph Street, Sarajevo, shortly after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. For the most part, it goes something like this:
It’s a compelling story, and one that is told in serious books and on multiple websites. It’s an account that, while respectful of the significance of Franz Ferdinand’s death, hooks pupils’ attention by stressing a tiny, awe-inspiring detail: that if Princip had not stopped to eat a sandwich where he did, he would never have been in the right place to spot his target. More specifically, though, we’re talking the version of events that’s being taught in many schools today. We’re talking the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, of course-the murder that set the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire on a collision course with Serbia, and Europe down the slippery slope that led to the outbreak of the First World War a month after Princip pulled the trigger on June 28, 1914. Yet it might never have happened–we’re now told– had Gavrilo Princip not got hungry for a sandwich. It was the great flash point of the 20th century, an act that set off a chain reaction of calamity: two World Wars, 80 million deaths, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the atomic bomb.
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