"The doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him."

Gavrilo Princip at the age of 19 did what no one before or after him did, and presumably  never will. He started a war. Not some local, tribal or civil war, but world war that would involve all Powers and many small countries. His seven bullets were followed by billions projectiles from handbags size guns to Big Bertha, a 420 mm monster  named after Alfred Krupp's wife that after 200 soldiers worked for six hours to assembly it could fire 2000 pounds shell over nine miles distance over the Belgian meadows: but it was not necessary for long; with some help of Czech Skoda field guns Bertha destroyed in less than four days 15 indestructible fortresses built with the best technology around Liege. The sound of Princip's gun was followed by the deafening sound of field guns and bombs and silent like death Mark IV 21 6.9 long torpedoes  racing with their 235 kg TNT warhead at the speed of 46 miles per cruel hour from distance of 12 kilometres over the blue, innocent waves of the sea towards its target, be it a cruiser or a civilian liner full of people living for few more minutes; sometimes it was Lusitania with 1195 and sometimes Antilles with 67; in this case the waves turned carmine yet still retained their innocence.

The weak sound of Gavrilo Princip's Browning that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Duchess of Hohenberg  magnified to destructive echo would wander across Europe battlefields for four years with increasing strenght. It would visit Galicia, two deadlocked  Marne battles resulting in stalemate, Verdun where the ground was covered by three feet of martial steel, Dolomites, Po, Tannenberg massacre, battles on rivers, battles  on riverine areas without usual fishermen, two battles of Masurian Lake, and one battle on Lake Naruch and other cemeteries on ground, in the air and in the sea.   In the air it reached only few hundred feet, but this deficiency was removed in the next war prepared without assassination, but with casual ultimata the were becoming a routine, by Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and to lesser extent by Wilson and Russians, whoever was there in power in particular era. 

Anyway, at that time the generation of' Kursk, Stalingrad, Ardenes, Dresden, El Alamein, Berlin, massacre of Stalingrad, Normandy with Caen, Bremen,the  former city and Bremen,the former battleship, both eliminated in the Stratego game, Hood, Arizona, Flying Fortresses,Coventry and Alcazar had the diapers changed  in the gynecological wards.

 Rest now and then you can continue to read. The  assassin escaped the death penalty by twenty seven days.  It was never determined with certainty whether Princip had been born on July 25 or on June 8 1894 and the court gave him properly the benefit of doubt accepting July 25 as the day of his birth., He and two of his accomplices would die from  the seasonal tuberculosis before the war was over. He died in military prison in Terezin in  today's Czech Republic not far from Prague. Princip did not survived the war he had opened.  In time of his death few months before the end of the war he weighted 40 kilograms. His arm was amputated when the disease reached the arm bone.  Two of his accomplices, Nedjelko Cabrinovic, 21 and Trifun Grabez , 23 died also before the end of the war, Trifko Grabez only nine month before the hostilities ended. Five of twenty-five defendants were sentence to death; two of them were reprieved; nine were acquitted, the rest got terms between life and three years.


Three weeks after the assassination Austrian envoy Count Giesl von Gieslingen delivered to Serbian Kingdom  an ultimatum  containing in ten points brazen demands. Some of them were unbelievable. Austria-Hungary requested arrest of several Serbians and provided their names: In other article the King was asked to relieve from duty all officers who expressed contempt for Austria-Hungary, which meant majority of the corps, and added other demands encroaching on Serbia sovereignty. Article six asked that Emperor Franz Joseph's I police agents be allowed to actively participate in investigation of the assassination and all activities aimed against the Habsburg monarchy which presumed the Austrian security personnel enters King Petar's I  Kingdom territory. Any government that protects its citizens, and all do, cannot accept such condition without giving his authority over the country: no crime, even assassination allow for usurpation of the sovereignty. What Hofburg  asked was assent to a mini occupation of a sovereign country.

Austria-Hungary had unsettled accounts with her neighbour and the provocative tone of the  ultimatum seems to indicate that Vienna was using   the Sarajevo murders to solve her problems with Serbian Kingdom for good. Hofburg diplomacy was delicate, competing with that of France, and more graceful-if international politics deserves the word-than German of British. Children and grandchildren of Metternich could not have forgotten his charm as Bismarck's inheritors could not forget his lack of...of... Austria must have been aware of the anger the ultimatum will evoke, and was prepared to welcome Serbian outrage.

Austria did not demanded an apology, extradition of the assassins nor compensation. They were minor issues that could be easily agreed to but the Imperium desired the ultimatum to be refused.
Serbia could not reject the insolent ultimatum as would have been proper nor could she answer in the same tone since the subject of the notes was a heinous crime and any negligent word or phrase would have been explained in terms of approval of murders.  Other question is whether Serbia would satisfy the conditions since some of the requests were unacceptable.

The color of the Kingdom's answer was subdued and on some points obsequious; an example is Serbian government's compliance with  it reminded of confrontation between first-grader and principal after the former had spilled ink on teacher's chair. Serbia practically accepted eight of ten articles, asked for evidence on one, and as expected, rejected the sixth point, the demand for allowing Austrian Detectives to question the suspects which demanded the suspect be interrogated by Imperial Police agents, since the granting the demand would violate the Constitution of the Serbian Kingdom.

 In the ultimatum the empire demanded dissolving of patriotic organization Narodna Obdrana and others with similar programs. The Kingdom stressed "The  Serbian government possessed no proof..."that the Narodna Obdrana and other similar societies have committed up to the present any criminal act of this nature...", but dissolved them anyway. In the article ten Royal government suggested that if the Imperial government finds the answer unsatisfactory, in order to preserve peace the proper step would be to refer the case to ... the International Tribunal in Hague or to the great Powers..."  

 That was all Austro-Hungarian Empire needed to trigger the war melody and Hofburg satisfied the need thirty days after the successor to the Habsburgs' hereditary throne died in Serbia's capital, on July twenty-eight;  that summer morning Austro-Hungarian troops responded in force by crossing the border fulfilling her  promise to their ebullient nations.             

An academic and unanswerable question is what would have happened had Gavrilo Princip missed. There are several variants.

1. He misses both

2. He misses the Duchess of Hohenberg but kills Franz Ferdinand

3. He kills Ferdinand, but misses the Duchess Sophie.

3. He wounds both, but the Archduke dies later while Sophie survives

4. He wounds both, but Sophie dies later while Ferdinand survives

5. He wounds both, but both die later

6. He wounds both, and both recover

7. He kills Ferdinand, wounds his wife who dies later

8. He kills Sophie, wounds her husband who dies later

Had there been only one person, there would be only five questions: was the victim killed, did the assassin missed him, was he wounded, did he died later or did he recover. The morbid problem can be complicated by impossibility to ascertain how long when injured the, victim or victims would have survived. In all scenarios where the Archduke dies, the ultimatum would have probably the same character or could be the same to the word: as identical as the resulting war. Had he been wounded and die shortly, the sharply worded diplomatic demarche that had been prepared for this outcome since the day of the attempt would follow and result in war. Had he linger like President Garfield who after being shot lived for seventy-nine days and died since the doctors never heard of Ignaz Semmelweis: Garfield assassin said: "The doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him." So had the successor to the throne survived  for longer time Austria-Hungary would surely send a sharply worded diplomatic note maybe faster than the original ultimatum: after his death the note prepared  "just in case" long time ago would have lead to war.

Had the Duchess been assassinated it is doubtful her death would have warranted an explosive correspondence, and had she been injured, whether surviving or dying, the Imperial Government action would have been calculated discreetly. Nevertheless, if the radicals prevailed, the war might have started even when the bullets missed both. It is case for a seer; it is impossible to guess what perhaps did not know neither the Emperor nor members of his government.

Gavrilo Princip by precise aiming removed the necessity to speculate what might have been if his victims had more luck.