The Day!

It was a warm, sunny morning and Appel Quay, Sarajevo was decorated with flowers and flags. The crowds lining both sides of the route were in a festive mood, eager to catch a glimpse of the heir to the imperial Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife as they drove past on the way to the reception at City Hall. The 120 policemen on duty seemed more than enough.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were in an open Graf and Stift car, the third of the six vehicle procession. They moved slowly, waving regally to the cheering crowd. But not all the crowd was cheering. Scattered along the road were Mehmedbasic, Cabrincvic, Cubrilovic, Popovic, Princip and Grabez, armed with hatred and a selection of bombs and pistols.

The route from the station (off map to left), to the town hall (off map to right).

As the cavalcade approached Cumburja Bridge, shortly after 10:00 a.m., the first four assassins were in place, waiting. As the car passed, Mehmedbasic did nothing. However, Cabrinovic calmly asked a nearby policeman which car the Archduke would be in. When he was told the third, Cabrinovic struck his bomb against a nearby lamppost to activate it. The sound was mistaken for a gun shot by several people and, as Cabrinovic threw his bomb, Franz Ferdinand turned to look directly at him. Seeing the bomb fly through the air, the chauffeur accelerated and the bomb bounced off the folded roof of the car and exploded in the street behind, wounding an officer in the following car, and several bystanders.

Showing remarkable calm, Franz Ferdinand ordered his car to stop and sent someone back to discover what had happened, then he proceeded to the City Hall where a jerky, scratched 8 second fragment of film shows him and Sophie leaving the car and entering the building. Inside, the reception went on as planned and at about 10:45, the Archduke and his wife returned to their car and set off to visit the wounded officer from the bomb attack.

It was decided to change the route in order to keep to wider streets and avoid the congested old town. Instead of turning right up Franz Josef Street, the cavalcade would continue along Appel Quay and take the longer, and safer, route to the hospital. It was a good plan, unfortunately, the wounded officer was the one who normally attended to these details of altered arrangements and no one else thought to inform the drivers of the change.

The most incredible photograph taken that day!

Of the many photographs taken of the royal couple that day, the most remarkable is a grainy snapshot taken by a bystander on a small box camera. It shows the view along Appel Quay from the corner of Franz Josef Street. The picture is framed by the leaves on the tree overhanging the photographer, and scattered people in their Sunday best are on the Quay waving hats and handkerchiefs.

The first car in the motorcade has just turned into Franz Josef Street to the photographer’s left and the wheels of the car in the picture, with Franz Ferdinand and Sophie visible in the back seat, are already beginning to turn to follow. On the extreme left of the photograph can be seen the corner of Moritz Schiller’s store and delicatessen, ornamented with a huge advertisement for Torley’s Hungarian sparkling wine.

Had the photographer turned 45 degrees to the left and photographed Schillers’ doorway ten feet (3m) along the street, he or she would have caught Gavrilo Princip trying to ignore an annoying acquaintance who had collared him. Had the photographer waited 30 seconds, the photograph would have shown the car stopped as the driver was told he had taken the wrong turn and, in the background, Princip raising a Browning FN M1910 pistol, turning his head aside and blindly firing two shots at the royal couple. Our photographer was half a minute away from taking the most dramatic picture of the 20^th century.

As Princip took poison and was wrestled to the sidewalk, it looked as if his unaimed shots had missed. Then blood poured out of Franz Ferdinand’s mouth. Sophie said, “My God, what has happened to you,” before collapsing on her husband’s lap. The Archduke called out, “Sophie dear! Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!” He was asked, “Is something hurting you?” and replied “It’s nothing,” several times. Then he choked on blood. Five minutes later, the car reached the Konak, the Governor’s residence where lunch was to have been served to the strains of a string quartet. By then, Sophie was already dead and her husband was dying beside her.

Remarkably, both Princip’s hurried shots had hit targets. One had gone through the car door and into Sophie’s stomach, the other had severed the Archduke’s jugular and lodged in his neck vertebrae. Both died from internal bleeding and the world was set on a path that would introduce the bloodiest century in human history.

The car today.