Sarajevo Assassination

Sarajevo Assassination 

the assassination of the Austrian crown prince, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

The archduke had arrived in Sarajevo to watch maneuvers by the Austro-Hungarian Army in observance of June 28, the anniversary of Serbia’s defeat by Turkey on Kosovo Polje in 1389, and a day of mourning in Serbia. The Austrian crown prince was assassinated by the conspiratorial group Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), headed by Gavrilo Princip and Danilo Ilič.

Young Bosnia was outlawed after the assassination, and Ilič and two other conspirators were executed. Princip, a minor, was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor and died in prison of tuberculosis. Many members of the organization were sentenced to prison, and some received life terms.

Austria-Hungary and Germany used the Sarajevo assassination as a pretext for the armed attack on Serbia that marked the beginning of World War I (1914–18).

SOURCES

Mlada Bosna: Pisma i prilozi Sarajevo. 1954.
Sarajevski atentat 28. VI. 1914. Sarajevo, 1965.

REFERENCES

Pisarev, Iu. A. Osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie iugoslavskikh narodov Avstro-Vengrii, 1905–1914. Moscow, 1962.
Pisarev, Iu. A. Obrazovanie Iugoslavskogo gosudarstva. Moscow, 1975.
Masleša, V. Mlada Bosna. Sarajevo, 1945.
Degujep, B. Sarajevo 1914. Belgrade, 1966.