A Royal Holiday

As Princip was completing his 'mystic journey,' the other half of the fateful equation was planning his trip to Bosnia. It almost never happened, the eighty-three-year-old Emperor, Franz Josef, was ill in the spring of 1914, so Franz Ferdinand needed to stay close in case he was suddenly called upon to assume the imperial mantle. But the Emperor recovered and the trip was scheduled. Archduke Franz Ferdinand would attend two days of army manoeuvres on June 26th and 27th and make a quick visit to Sarajevo on the 28th before returning home.

Sophie and Franz in happier days.

Franz was looking forward to the trip. It would be a short holiday for him and his wife Sophie, an escape from the stultifying protocol of Vienna. Franz loved Sophie, but she was a commoner, so was not allowed to sit beside her husband on state occasions in the Austrian capital. On the edges of the empire, things were laxer, Sophie would be able to ride in the car with Franz and attend functions with him. Besides, it was their fourteenth wedding anniversary on July 1—and Sophie had just announced that she was pregnant with their fourth child.

It was not a holiday for the Bosnian Governor, General Oskar Potiorek. He was fussing over details such as what pennants to put on the cars, should the wine at dinner be chilled or at room temperature, would the Archduke like to hear a string quartet play during the meal? One telegram to Vienna was about providing a saddle for Franz, Potiorek asked what Franz Ferdinand weighed and how long a stirrup he needed (83.5 kilos and 72 centimeters).

One day's tally of dead animals.

Franz didn't care about the details, he went off hunting, one of the great loves of his life. On the final day of his June hunting trip, a cat walked into view as Franz sat in his car. He pulled out his pistol and shot it dead. It was the last of the 250,000 animals that the Archduke killed in his busy hunting career