Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Shot on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip; the killing of the Austro-Hungarian heir triggered the July Crisis and the First World War.

Overview

The heir to the Habsburg throne visited Bosnia on the anniversary of the Kosovo battle with his wife Sophie. Members of Young Bosnia, supplied by the Black Hand of Serbian officers, waited along the announced route. A first plot failed with a bomb that wounded others; then the driver took a wrong turn onto the quay by the Latin bridge, where Princip, a nineteen year old student, fired twice at a few paces, killing both almost instantly. Austria Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia; the alliance systems mobilized; by August the world war had begun. Princip died of tuberculosis in prison in 1918 before the war destroyed the empire he aimed to shake. The assassination remains the most consequential political murder of the twentieth century.