JUNE 28, 1914, was the Feast of Saint Vitus, an important holiday in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The city was decorated with flags displaying the two-headed eagle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a blazing sun shone down on the throngs of people in the streets. A small procession of four automobiles moved slowly along, making its way toward the city hall. In the second car, wearing a military helmet covered with green feathers, sat the old emperor’s heir Archduke Francis Ferdinand. He was Paying a state visit to this province of the empire he would one day inherit. Beside him, shielding herself from the hot sun with a parasol, sat his wife, the Countess Sophie. Near the Cumuria Bridge, a bomb came hurtling through the air. It missed the archduke and his wife, but exploded in the street, and flying splinters injured some of the archduke’s party and a number of bystanders. The procession went on to the city hall, where the archduke shouted at the mayor: “One comes here for a visit and is received with bombs. Mr. Mayor, what do you say? It’s outrageous. All right, now you may speak.” The mayor, who had been in the first car of the procession and had not seen the bombing, read his speech of welcome. The archduke made a little speech in reply. Then, in spite of the danger of another bombing, he decided to go to the hospital and see the injured persons. Again the four cars set out, but at an intersection the first two made a wrong turn. As the cars stopped to turn around, a young man on the street raised a pistol and fired two shots one at the archduke and the other at his wife. At first it seemed as if the bullets …
Read More »The Storm Breaks 1914
