For Pasic, a wily survivor of some of the world's most treacherous politics, the choices—to the extent that he did know of the plot— were not easy. His country was exhausted after the Balkan wars, and in no position to defy a Great Power. An attack on Franz Ferdinand was bound to trigger some kind of nasty international situation with which Serbia would find it difficult to deal. Of course he could do nothing, in the hope that the inexperienced schoolboys would flunk their test, but whatever they did might at least supply hard-liners in Vienna with a pretext for taking action. If, on the other hand, Pasic warned the Austrians, news of what he had done leaked out, the Black Hand might order him assassinated too, or else might use news of what the Prime Minister had done to label him a traitor. Whatever warning he sent also might be used by Vienna to prove that his government was involved in the plot against the Archduke; was he not admitting it by his very warning that Serbian officials were planning an attack?
In the end, despite his later denials, Pasic may have sent a cable to his legation in Vienna sometime in the first half of June instructing his minister there to inform the Austrian government that "owing to a leakage of information," Serbia "had grounds to suspect that a plot was being hatched against the life of the Archduke on the occasion of his journey to Bosnia. Since this visit might give rise to regrettable incidents on the part of some fanatic, it would be useful to suggest to the Austro-Hungarian government the advisability of postponing the Archduke's visit."
Whether or not Pasic sent such a cable, his envoy did seek such an interview. Minister Ljuba Jovanovic, who may have received the cable, had at least two reasons for not following his Prime Minister's instructions. He was on bad terms with the Hapsburg foreign minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold, the official whom he was supposed to alert, and preferred not to have to meet with him. He chose instead to seek an interview with Finance Minister Leon von Bilinski, under whose administration (at least temporarily) fell the newly annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the Archduke was scheduled to visit. Security issues, however, were the responsibility of General Oskar Potiorek, governor of the provinces, nominally subordinate to Bilinski but actually feuding with him. Potiorek had deliberately ignored Bilinski in making arrangements for the Archduke's mission to Bosnia.
Jovanovic met with Bilinski on June 21 at noon. He apparently decided to cut out the very heart of the message he supposedly had been told to deliver—that Belgrade had actual information of a plot to kill the Archduke. Instead, he spoke in general terms of the dangers inherent in the visit to Sarajevo and of the possibility that some disaffected Serb might attack Franz Ferdinand. Jovanovic had reason not to tell of the plot to kill Franz Ferdinand; he had been Apis's nominee for foreign minister in the May coup d'état that Hartwig had prevented. Now there were rumors that Apis was scheduling a new coup, perhaps for August, and once again proposed to promote Jovanovic. This was no time for Jovanovic to side with Pasic against Apis.
In turn, Bilinski had reason to dismiss the vague warning he received. He had been ignored in security planning. Responsibility had been assumed by his subordinate, General Potiorek, on the express orders of Franz Ferdinand. If things went wrong on the trip to Bosnia, Potiorek, not Bilinski, would be blamed. Besides, it was difficult to worry much about what might happen to the Archduke: Bilinski had no cause to love him.
In the Serbian capital the Prime Minister tried to find out exactly what was going on, in order to stop it. Apis stonewalled; and Pasic loyalists in the army, the war department, and the interior ministry were unable to shadow Princip's conspirators, who by now were in Bosnia, beyond Serbia's official reach.
Leaders of Narodna Odbrana, the Serb nationalist society, held positions in Pasic's government, and therefore also learned of the assassination plot. They instructed their contact man in Bosnia to stop it from going forward. He failed.
On June 2 the Central Executive Committee of the Black Hand convened. Or maybe it was just an informal meeting of all members who could be brought together on short notice. At the meeting, the members heard of the assistance that Major Tankosic had extended to the Princip group on behalf of their organization. For whatever reasons, they ordered the mission aborted immediately. Apparently the decision was unanimous—except, it seems, for Apis and Tankosic.
Apis dispatched Tankosic's go-between with the Princip group to Bosnia, where he met with Danilo Ilic, who served as technical coordinator for the assassination team. Ilic relayed the order to Princip: call it off! Princip refused.
As of June 20 or 21, Apis may have believed the assassination plan had been cancelled, while Pasic may still have felt otherwise. Ilic repeatedly tried to persuade Princip to obey orders to cancel the attack. But a clash of views in middle June between Apis and Pasic—whether about the death plot or something else—drove a Black Hand agent to send a new message to Princip revoking Apis's order to cancel and reinstating the operation. The man who brought the message later was accused by Serbia of being an Austrian spy, but the accusation was never proved; in fact, he served as Apis's chief spymaster within Austria-Hungary.
In any event, the conspiracy no longer may have been much of a secret; we are told that the cafes of the Balkans were abuzz with speculations about a plot to kill Franz Ferdinand, and that the cafes were alive with Austrian spies. A century later, we still do not know with certainty who knew what, and when they knew it.
CHAPTER 20: THE RUSSIAN
CONNECTION
Was Russia somehow involved in the plot against Austria's future leader? In government circles, people asked that question at the time, and in scholarly circles, academics have asked that question ever since.
Russian involvement would have made little sense. Franz Ferdinand was the leading pro-Russian in his government; therefore removing him from the scene would have run counter to Russia's interests. Of course his political views were misunderstood elsewhere, so perhaps they were in St. Petersburg as well. Perhaps the extent of his friendship was not fully understood. But as a champion of monarchism throughout Europe, surely, on fiercely held principle, the Czar would have opposed such a murder.
Russia's Balkan policy, run in the field by Nicolai Hartwig as minister to Serbia (1909–14), was, as noted earlier, susceptible to being viewed as in the nature of a rogue operation. A militant pan-Slav, with long service in and knowledge of the Balkans and the Middle East, Hartwig "used the Serb cause as a weapon in his struggle against his own government," according to the well-informed French minister in Belgrade. "With the support of conservative and orthodox circles at St. Petersburg" he battled Sazonov, the foreign minister, and "he dragged Russian diplomacy toward the Balkan evolution of the last two years which he had the merit of conceiving and carrying out."
It was Hartwig who had brought the Balkan states together for a time against both Turkey and Austria, and it was generally believed that he dictated policy in Belgrade. But he was unlikely to have approved the Black Hand plot; he had just rescued the Pasic government from Apis, approving the more cautious nonprovocative faction against the hotheads.
It apparently is true that the Russian military attaché in Belgrade, Colonel Viktor Artamanov, worked closely with Apis. The two may have run spy networks together. According to some allegations, at one time Artamanov provided Apis with funds for operations. It is not inconceivable that in some fashion Artamanov became aware that Apis was helping the Bosnian schoolboys. There is a story that Artamanov may also have assured Apis that he had it on good authority that if Austria attacked, Russia would come to Serbia's aid. There is no evidence, however, that anyone in a position to give such a guarantee on behalf of the Czar's government did so.
George Malcolm Thomson, a popular historian, writes in The Twelve Days (1964) that Artamanov "was, from an early stage, a party to the Black Hand conspiracy to murder the Archduke." Thomson bases his claim on the research of Albertini, research that does not support such an unqualified allegation. Artamanov denied everything in an interview with Al
bertini. Albertini did not believe Artamanov's story, but could not disprove it.
A document dated June 12, 1914, found in recently opened Russian Ministry of Defense files, relates that in 1910 Russia extended a subsidy of 4 million francs to the Serbian army's officer corps and that the money had been misused and disappeared long since. The document, which originated from the Russian military agent in Serbia hinted that some of the money might have been improperly siphoned off to the Black Hand; and it appears to confirm that the Russian government, based upon this past experience, would not consider providing any more funds to the Serbian officer corps. The assumption is that Russia would not want to help the Black Hand.
Was there a Russian connection in the Sarajevo affair? If there was, no evidence of it has yet been uncovered.
A few days before the assassination, Prime Minister Pasic received an anonymous letter. Its author speculated that the Austrian government might arrange to have "that foolish Ferdinand" killed during the Bosnian maneuvers, and then blame it on Pasic's government as an excuse to start a war against Serbia. It is not what happened, but it could have been.
CHAPTER 21: THE TERRORISTS
STRIKE
Sunday, June 28, 1914. Early in the morning, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his consort, Sophie, prayed at mass in a chapel set up for them at their hotel. Leaving the suburban spa of Ilidze, they then boarded a train to Sarajevo, a trip of less than half an hour. At the railroad terminal on the outskirts of town, they transferred to automobiles, in which they rode the rest of the way. The display of motor vehicles was striking; only recently had the automobile come into common use.
The procession of chauffeur-driven cars entered Sarajevo somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m., heading for the town hall. The mayor and the chief of police led the way in the first auto. The Archduke and the Duchess followed in the second, a convertible touring car that had been borrowed for their use. With them was the military governor, General Potiorek. The owner of the borrowed car, Count Franz von Harrach, sat in front next to the driver. The rest of the procession—between two and four other vehicles, depending upon whose account one accepts—followed.
The rains had finally stopped. The morning mists disappeared. A dazzling sunshine beamed down upon the anniversary couple: he, brilliantly attired in his many-colored uniform; she, radiant in white. At last side by side at a formal official celebration, they took in the sights and sounds along the route, and the enthusiasm of the cheering crowds and the booming of the twenty-four-cannon salutes.
Later, historians were puzzled by the lack of security precautions. Soldiers ought to have lined the route but did not. Some 22,000 Hapsburg troops were in the vicinity, but General Potiorek detailed only an honor guard of 120 to escort and protect Franz Ferdinand and his party. It was explained later that the general wanted to prove that under his iron-fisted rule, order was so firmly established that policing was unnecessary. If so, what Potiorek proved was the reverse of what he had intended.
Turbulent Bosnia was a borderland. It and its neighbors formed the arena where East met West, where rival clans, nationalities, religions, and empires collided. Bosnia's capital city of Sarajevo, an ancient settlement with roots in the distant past, consisted of a cluster of buildings stretched along both sides of the Miljacka River. It was laced together into a town by bridges. A torrent during the winter, the Miljacka slowed during the summer so that in June the riverbed was beginning to dry up. A British visitor in the late 1930s claimed that the waters of the Miljacka ran red, but that may well have been an optical illusion produced by a reading of history. The road that the motorcade followed into town was the Appel Embankment, which ran parallel to the river. It was bordered on the Miljacka side by a low embankment and on the other side by houses. It was the town's only considerable thoroughfare.
Centuries of rule by the Muslim Ottoman Empire had left their mark on the inhabitants: their dress, habits, and behavior. The appearance of the streets, especially as one turned away from the river into the narrow, winding streets of the interior, was distinctly Oriental.
The skyline of Sarajevo, punctuated by minarets, aglow in the dazzling summer sunshine, served as a reminder that the city often had changed hands. There were a hundred mosques in Sarajevo, and almost as many churches. The synagogues, though less conspicuous, attested to a Jewish presence. A polyglot, multinational, religiously diverse population had learned to live, not only with one another, but also under whatever flag flew. Dominations and powers were temporary at best, and, as it happened, were about to change once again, as a result of the events in Sarajevo that June 28.
That morning, Princip had stationed his fellow conspirators along the Appel Embankment at three places where it was intersected by bridges. The motorcade driving along the quay therefore would be running a gauntlet. Princip's older friend Danilo Ilic was to serve as coordinator with no fixed place of his own, to move his gunmen when and where needed. Ilic, it will be remembered, had tried with no success to persuade Princip to follow orders to abort the mission.
At the first of the bridges, the Archduke's procession entered a danger zone: three conspirators formed a line along the river side of the quay, and two on the land side. The first attempt on the Archduke's life came from the river side, from Nedeljiko Cabrinovic, who asked a policeman to point out which was Franz Ferdinand's car. Then he knocked the cap off his bomb on a lamppost to detonate it. He threw the bomb wildly at the Archduke's car, hitting the folded-back hood of the convertible, from which it rolled off to explode against a wheel of the car following it.
The Countess felt a graze on her neck from the detonator, flying wide, while an occupant of the car behind, Colonel Erich von Merizzi, an aide to General Potiorek, was wounded on the wrist by flying shrapnel. The noise of the explosion was alarming, another officer and a number of bystanders were lightly injured, and the procession stopped to inquire.
Cabrinovic, the perpetrator, ran from the scene. He jumped from the embankment and tried to escape in the waters of the shallow riverbed. Captured by police who pursued him, he swallowed his poison pill, which turned out to be too old to work; its only effect was to make him throw up.
Princip, who had heard the explosion and shouts from a crowd, hurried to the spot, where it looked as though all was over. The gendarmes had Cabrinovic firmly in custody, and were bustling him off to the police station. None of the other conspirators was to be found.
What happened to the others is most concisely recounted by A. J. P. Taylor. "Of the other conspirators, one was so jammed in the crowd that he could not pull the bomb out of his pocket. A second saw a policeman standing near him and decided that any movement was too risky. A third felt sorry for the Archduke's wife and did nothing. A fourth lost his nerve and slipped off home."
Alone, Princip wandered back to what had been his appointed station on the river side of the Appel Embankment at what was called the Latin Bridge. He then crossed the street. Accounts differ as to where he then stood or sat down.
Franz Ferdinand decided to cancel existing plans, which called for his motorcade to maneuver through winding alleys on the way to the museum; but neither did he return the way he had come. After a stop at the town hall for a reception and speeches, he insisted on driving to the hospital to visit Colonel Merizzi, lightly wounded in the Cabrinovic attack. The driver of the lead car either was not told or did not understand this; he followed original plans and turned off the Appel Embankment into a side street to drive toward the museum, and the Archduke's driver simply followed. "Turn back!" General Potiorek shouted. The driver stopped. He considered how best to back out. His car's rear may have been blocked by the rest of the motorcade. He would have had to maneuver slowly in the narrow side street, perhaps putting his vehicle into reverse or trying a U-turn. Meanwhile the vehicle stood motionless. All this happened about five feet from Princip. He was surrounded by onlookers. He must have been astonished, but he thought quickly and seized his chance. He reached for a bomb in his po
cket, and became aware that he was too hemmed in by the crowd to swing his arm for a free toss at his target. So he pulled out his pistol and fired two shots at point-blank range, hitting the Archduke's jugular with one and the abdomen of the Duchess with the other. At that distance it was almost impossible to miss.
Princip then turned the revolver on himself, but was prevented from firing it by a bystander who hurled himself on the assassin's arm. It was not clear what had happened. To some the two shots that had rung out unexpectedly sounded like the backfires to which automobiles were prone in those early days. Confusion erupted as the crowd and nearby police battled one another to get at the boyish assassin. Princip swallowed his suicide capsule, then vomited when it did not work. The mob began to beat him and may well have been dragging him off to lynch him. Struggling, Princip used the handle of his weapon to hit back. Eventually the police wrestled him away from the crowd. Thereupon he dropped his bomb. Onlookers shouted out warnings as police reinforcements arrived and cleared the scene.
Meanwhile the limousine with the dying royal couple fled to seek help. "Sophie dear! Sophie dear! Don't die! Stay alive for our children!" Franz Ferdinand called out; and then, more weakly, but repeatedly, "It is nothing," as aides anxiously asked how he felt. The fatally wounded couple were rushed to the governor's residence, only minutes away. They had been shot at about 10:30 a.m.; Sophie died at roughly 10:45 a.m.; Franz Ferdinand, at around 11:00 a.m. It was not "nothing."
CHAPTER 22: EUROPE YAWNS
Had the crime in Sarajevo been committed even a century earlier, it would have taken weeks or months for word of it to reach faraway places. In the nature of the case, therefore, its consequences might have been far different. But technology had changed things. In the age of the steamship and, above all, the telegraph, news traveled fast. The foreign offices of the world knew of the shootings at once, and within hours condolences began to pour in from places as far away as the White House in Washington, D.C.
Europe's Last Summer Page 13
