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Borijove Jevtic, one of the leaders of the Narodna Odbrana who was arrested with Gavrilo Princip immediately after the assassination, gave this firsthand account of the killing.
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A tiny clipping from a newspaper, mailed without comment from a secret band of terrorists in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, to their comrades in Belgrade, was the torch which set the world afire with war in 1914. That bit of paper wrecked old, proud empires. It gave birth to new, free nations.
I was one of the members of the terrorist band in Belgrade which received it.
The little clipping declared that the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand would visit Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, June 28, to direct army maneuvers in the neighboring mountains.
It reached our meeting place, the cafe called Zlatna Moruna, one night the latter part of April, 1914. To understand how great a sensation that little piece of paper caused among us when it was passed from hand to hand almost in silence, and how greatly it inflamed our hearts, it is necessary to explain just why the Narodna Odbrana existed, the kind of men that were in it, and the significance of that date, June 28, on which the Archduke dared to enter Sarajevo.
As every one knows, the old Austrio-Hungarian Empire was built by conquest and intrigues, by sales and treacheries, which held [...] men of the upper classes were ardent patriots. They were dissimilar in everything except hatred of the oppressor.
Such were the men into whose hands the tiny bit of newsprint was sent by friends in Bosnia that April night in Belgrade. At a small table in a very humble cafe, beneath a flickering gas jet we sat and read it. There was no advice nor admonition sent with it. Only four letters and two numerals were sufficient to make us unanimous, without discussion, as to what we should do about it.
They were conived [sic] in Sarajevo all the twenty-two conspirators were in their allotted positions, armed and ready. They were distributed five hundred yards apart over the whole route along which the Archduke must travel from the railroad station to the town hall.
When Francis Ferdinand and his retinue drove from the station they were allowed to pass the first two conspirators. The motor cars were driving too fast to make an attempt feasible and in the crowd were many Serbians; throwing a grenade would have killed many innocent people.
When the car passed Gabrinovic, the compositor, he threw his grenade. It hit the side of the car, but Francis Ferdinand with presence of mind threw himself back and was uninjured. Several officers riding in his attendance were injured.
The cars sped to the Town Hall and the rest of the conspirators did not interfere with them. After the reception in the Town Hall General Potiorek, the Austrian Commander, pleaded with Francis Ferdinand to leave the city, as it was seething with rebellion. The Archduke was persuaded to drive the shortest way out of the city and to go quickly.
The road to the maneuvers was shaped like the letter V, making a sharp turn at the bridge over the River Milgacka. Francis Ferdinand's car could go fast enough until it reached this spot but here it was forced to slow down for the turn. Here Princip had taken his stand.
As the car came abreast he stepped forward from the curb, drew his automatic pistol from his coat and fired two shots. The first struck the wife of the Archduke, the Archduchess Sofia, in the abdomen. She was an expectant mother. She died instantly.
The second bullet struck the Archduke close to the heart.
He uttered only one word, 'Sofia' -- a call to his stricken wife. Then his head fell back and he collapsed. He died almost instantly.
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The assassination of the Archduke and Archduchess is widely considered to be the event that launched World War I. Its effects, like all original starting points of a chaos theory-constructed web, were enormous, rippling from that high pinnacle down into the most common and ordinary people of the region and the world.
Let us imagine that the double murder never took place. Rewind the wheel and take it back to the beginning. Here then, are Princip's bullets, firing out of the chamber...
Duchess Sofia cried out in shock as Ferdinand shoved her out of the way. The bullet struck the empty space of seat between them.
The second bullet followed, intent on piercing the Archduke's head after he'd ducked down to save his wife from death. Ferdinand flattened down to the floor of the car, pulling Sofia with him.
A bird flew by at this precise moment and it was its heart that the second bullet found. It screamed its last breath and fell to the ground, dead long before its impact with the street.
In the aftermath, the members of Narodna Odbrana were all arrested and imprisoned for the rest of their days.
A major crisis had been averted.
Across the Atlantic, in the United States, men, women, and children enjoyed their summer, unaware of what just transpired in Old World Europe. Cookouts, parties, and baseball; the essential summer elements, continued on undisturbed, America's independence just around the corner.
The world was at peace, thanks in no small part to a fallen bird.
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03-04-2006, 05:44 PM
