The spot near the Latin Bridge, where on 28th June 1914, Gavrilo Princip fired the shot at Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, which would change the course of history and start ww1 [1200×900]

When Napoleon was invading Germany the Holy Roman Empire, 800 years old, closed up shop and ceased to exist. The elected Emperor, who for many centuries had been from the Austrian House of Hapsburg, abdicated his German title and set up a new Empire based around his personal feudal holdings in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Northern Italy, and parts of modern Romania, Poland, and the Balkans. This new Austrian Empire was a monster amalgamated from a bunch of disparate and distinct ethnic and religious identities, histories, and cultures. It was tied together by the accident of history, wherein the Hapsburgs had come to rule or dominate them through marriages, inheritance, conquests, and trades. It had no reason to naturally exist except for the external pressure of the ruling dynasty to maintain their wealth, power, and prestige.

It was Emperor Francis II who abdicated the German throne and established the new Austrian one, and it was his grandson Franz Joseph who would be Emperor for much of the later half of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th. Franz Joseph was raised as an Arch-Conservative, what Marx and Engels called a Reactionary, because all of his uncles and extended family had fought Napoleon and desperately rolled back the democratic waves unleashed by the French Revolution. It was his family’s position that they ruled by the right of divine appointment, and that their rule was absolute and autocratic– unaccountable to anyone. They weren’t alone in this reactionary arch-conservatism, they along with the Prussians and Russians formed the Holy Alliance to defend autocracy and enforce the traditional status quo of noble and royal privileged.

It was a nephew of Franz Joseph who it appeared would become the inheritor of the Austrian imperial project upon the Emperor’s death. Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and his Uncle were not ideologically aligned in many ways, despite their shared notions of privileged. It was the Emperor’s position that they must not concede anything in the face modernity and the rise of Liberalism, but it was the Arch Duke’s position that reasonable reforms would ensure the longevity of the empire and the safety of its ruling dynasty. Franz Ferdinand was in Serbia for the purpose of trooping the colors, to demonstrate to the Serbians that they were part of the empire but also he wanted to conduct a PR campaign showing them that as part of the empire they, and their culture, would be respected and protected. Franz Ferdinand envisioned an empire of equals, where each of his Kingdoms and possessions would work in concert lending their strengths and supporting one-another to greatness (rather than being merely dominated by the German-Austrian nobility).

It was the purpose of the Black Hand terrorist/revolutionary group to free Serbia from all imperial and foreign influences. Serbia had, for centuries, been part of someone else’s empire whether that was Byzantine, Bulgarian, Ottoman, or Austrian and they felt the time was right to assert Serbia’s sovereignty and fight for its independence. To them a moderate like Franz Ferdinand was a danger because he threatened to offer a softer, gentler, and more accommodating approach to keeping nations like Serbia under their wing rather than dominating and generating ill-will like his Uncle and forefathers had done. They did not want his PR campaign to successfully convince Serbians that they were better off under the Austrians than they would be going into business for themselves as an independent nation. In killing Franz Ferdinand they ensured that the Austrians would come down hard on Serbia in vengeance, which would force Serbians to fight them. Whether or not they achieved independence was irrelevant because it removed the moderate Franz Ferdinand from the Imperial Succession and hardened Serbians against their masters.

Thank you for not including the apocryphal sandwich detail, it doesn’t enter the story until a Brazilian newspaper reported it in the 2000s.