Sarajevo: 28 June 1914

Nobody could be sure when the war would come or what event would trigger it off. Few could have guessed that it would begin with a murder in the town of Sarajevo in the Serbian part of the Austrian Empire.

Serbians living inside the Austrian Empire wanted to be free of Austrian rule, so that they could join those Serbs living outside the empire in their own independent state of Serbia - in the Balkans. This desire to be free of foreign rule is called nationalism. Obviously, the Austrians were determined to keep their empire in Europe in one piece. One way of doing this would be to crush the independent state of Serbia. Russia had promised to protect Serbia if the Austrians attacked her.

On 28 June 1914, a group of Serbian nationalists living inside the Austrian Empire plotted the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire. The plot very nearly went completely wrong. The first grenade attack failed to injure the Archduke as the grenade exploded under the car behind. Franz Ferdinand decided, sensibly enough, to abandon the rest of the planned visit. He ordered the driver to do a U-turn and leave the town. At the spot where this manoeuvre was taking place stood another conspirator, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. For Princip this was a tremendous stroke of luck, though the Archduke probably felt differently! He jumped on to the running-board of the car and shot the Archduke at point blank range. Another shot accidentally struck the pregnant wife of Franz Ferdinand in the stomach. Within 15 minutes both were dead.

The murder took place in Sarajevo, just across the border from Serbia. The Austrians immediately blamed the Serbian government for the assassination. There is no evidence for this at all but it gave the Austrians the excuse they were looking for to attack Serbia. On 28 July the Austrian army invaded Serbia. They expected a quick victory against the tiny Serb state. However, they should have anticipated that Russia, Serbia´s ally, would not allow Serbia to be crushed.

Russia, France and Germany all mobilised their armies to frighten their enemies into backing down, but it only succeeded in making a European war more likely. Germany, Austria´s ally, declared war on Russia (1 August) and then France. She then invaded Belgium as part of her attack on France, and Britain declared war on Germany (4 August). Two days later, on 6 August, Austria declared war on Russia.

Neil Demarco: Britain and the Great War; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 8