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June 28, 1914 - Sarajevo Through the Eyes of Gavrilo Princip
In 1908, Austria-Hungary officially took control of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Before that, it had been running the area with its army, but now it legally claimed it too. This angered many South Slavic nationalists. They saw Sarajevo as a city controlled by a foreign power and looked to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, as a place that could stand up to Austria-Hungary.
Gavrilo Princip was born on July 25, 1894, in a small village in western Bosnia. He was an ethnic Serb from a poor family. As a young man, he was a student who loved literature and dreamed of becoming a poet. He had read about heroes who sacrificed themselves for freedom and began to believe that an assassination could help bring change. He tried to join Serbia’s army but was turned away because he was small, weak, and suffering from tuberculosis. Even so, he stayed determined.
In Serbia, there was a secret group called Ujedinjenje ili smrt (“Union or Death”), better known as the Black Hand. It was connected to Serbian military officers, including Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, also called “Apis.” Members of this group secretly supported efforts against Austria-Hungary.
Princip joined a plot in Sarajevo with Trifko Grabež and Nedeljko Čabrinović. Through connections to the Black Hand, they received four pistols and six hand grenades. The weapons were secretly moved from Belgrade into Bosnia. They were also given cyanide pills to take if they were caught.
The attack was planned for June 28, known as Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day), the anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. This date was very important in Serbian history and national pride. To many nationalists, the Archduke’s visit on that day felt like an insult. On the morning of the visit, seven assassins stood along the motorcade route, waiting.
Sunday, June 28, 1914, 5:30 a.m. — Oprkanj Street 3, Sarajevo
You wake on a thin mattress in a cramped room that smells of damp plaster, old wool, and cold ash. Pre-dawn light leaks through a curtained window in a weak blue strip, and somewhere close a muezzin’s call threads between roofs and chimneys. Your fingers find the weight of the FN pistol metal-cold against your palm, and the small glass vial of cyanide clicks softly when you move it. Outside, a cart wheel creaks on cobbles; inside, your throat tastes of stale tobacco and yesterday’s coffee grounds.
Sunday, June 28, 1914, 8:00 a.m. — Oprkanj Street 3, Danilo Ilić’s house, Sarajevo
You stand in the front room with your collar tight to your neck, listening to the street outside wake into footsteps and low voices. Ilić speaks close and clipped; paper rustles; metal knocks softly as weapons change hands. The others avoid each other’s eyes, boys’ faces gone waxy in the morning light, caps in hands, breath smelling of cheap cigarettes and milk coffee. When you slide the pistol into your pocket, the cold steel presses your ribs through cloth with every inhale.
Sunday, June 28, 1914, 9:15 a.m. — Appel Quay (Obala), near the Latin (Lateiner) Bridge, Sarajevo
You move from the bazaar’s shadowed lanes into open sun, the smell of hot copper and roasted coffee giving way to river mud and horse sweat. Bunting and black-yellow flags hang stiff from stone façades; a tram hums on its line, sparks faint at the overhead wire. You stop near the quay wall with the Miljacka below—green-brown and low—your boots gritty with dust, your mouth dry as you test the pistol’s outline under your jacket. Around you, fezzes and parasols bob in the crowd, and a gendarme’s field-grey shoulder flashes between bodies.
Sunday, June 28, 1914, 10:05 a.m. — Appel Quay (Obala), east of Ćumurija Bridge, Sarajevo
