The Day After

There had been anger and minor anti-Serb demonstrations in Sarajevo on Sunday afternoon as word spread of the assassination. On Monday it erupted into full scale rioting. It began when mobs carrying black flags and pictures of the dead Archduke and his wife sang the national anthem at the scene of the killing before going to the cathedral for prayers. After that, Catholic Croats and Muslims tore through the streets attacking anything with a Serb connection. Shops, clubs and businesses were looted, the Serb owned Hotel Europe had all its furniture thrown out of windows, two Serbian newspapers were ransacked and around 50 people were injured and one killed. In the afternoon, troops were called in to restore order, martial law was declared, a curfew imposed, and inns, coffee shops and hotels closed.

Meanwhile, Princip and Cabrinovic, both of whom had only taken enough cyanide to make them ill, were being interrogated. Ilic had also been picked up the day before, but all kept quiet and the Austrian authorities weren’t even convinced that the three knew each other let alone that they were part of a wider conspiracy. Grabez was soon captured and on July 1 or 2, either Ilic or Princip told all. Over the succeeding days and weeks, Mehmedbasic fled the country but the rest of the conspirators and anyone who had helped them or was connected to them was arrested.

Eventually, twenty five were tried, nine were acquitted, three, including Ilic were sentence to be hanged and the rest were given prison sentences of varying lengths. The reason the assassins were not hanged was their age, under Austrian law there was no death penalty for anyone under twenty, and all were teenagers, Popovic being the youngest at only sixteen.

The assassin's trial. Princip is in the middle of the front  row.

This is not to say they had it easy, condition were dreadful and beatings common. Most died in prison, Cabrilovic in 1916 and Princip in 1918. The escapee, Mehmedbasic, was pardoned in 1919. He was killed by Croatian Fascists in 1943. Only Popovic and Cubrilovic lived to be old men. Popovic returned to Sarajevo after the war and was a professor of philosophy at the university there. He died aged 84 in 1980. Cubrilovic died at age 93 in 1990, after terms as Minister of Forests and Agriculture in Tito’s Yugoslavia. He was a proponent of ethnically pure Slavic states.