Assassination Of The Archduke Franz Ferdinand

The Immediate Cause of the First World War

Europe plunged into a general war in 1914 after ninety-nine years of peace, since 1815, which had witnessed the end of the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. There had, of course, been a number of wars since 1815: Italy had had to fight for her inde­pendence; Germany had fought three short campaigns, against Denmark, Austria, and then France in 1870, before the German Reich could be made; the Turks had been driven out of Europe and the Balkan powers which took the place of the Ottoman Empire fought among themselves. Yet always the Great Powers had managed to keep these conflicts from spreading.

At first, the spirit which had guided the conservative statesmen who had settled Europe after Napoleon at the Congress of Vienna continued as the mainstay of peace. It was the duty of the sovereigns of Europe and their ministers never again to allow Europe to destroy itself, and its social order. Later in the century, this idea lingered on as “the Concert of Europe”, which still, in a vague form, preserved the idea of unity. Able statesmen such as Bismarck and Disraeli could still summon up a European spirit to avoid disaster. The “Concert of Europe” by the beginning of the twentieth century had given way to a much less secure way of keeping the peace, the Balance of Power; a Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy faced a Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain.

Other factors increased the likelihood of war when the century began. There were fierce resentments from past wars in the Balkans and France remained unreconciled to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine which Germany, against Bismarck’s advice, had taken from her in 1870. Germany, the most powerful military and industrial nation of the Continent, ruled by a neurotic and vainglorious Kaiser, Wilhelm II, resented the fact that she had virtually no colonial possessions whilst Britain and France had huge empires. Determined to win her “Place in the Sun”, Germany started a naval building programme  to  challenge  the  British  Navy.  Britain replied by building yet more ships. In general, all the nations, small, medium and big, were supporting ever-larger armed forces year by year. Europe was in a nationalistic mood. In the civilized countries of Western Europe, little boys wore sailor suits and their nurseries Were full of toy soldiers. When war came the people welcomed it, though only in Germany was it welcomed whole-heartedly.

Nevertheless war was not inevitable. There were precedents and tried methods for solving crises in the hands of the diplomats. Wars are not made by moods, and if there was ‘ jingoism” this was counter-balanced by great economic stability and by the growth of international feeling. Currencies were interchangeable, and you could pay for a drink in the Cafe Royal in Piccadilly in Greek drachmas, French francs or German marks. Passports were unneces­sary in most countries. The growth of industry and trade between the nations of Europe seemed to make war unthinkable and, though there was talk about commercial rivalry overseas, the struggle for export markets was far away.

The great financial and economic interests of Europe were on the whole against the idea of war. If Nietzsche and Kipling in different ways glorified force, it was also the age of Tolstoy, Ibsen, Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. One has to conclude that the profound universal influences making for war or peace largely cancelled themselves out. All Europe was guilty and also not guilty of allowing war in 1914. But when one looks at the way war was actually brought about it is another story.

Although during the nineteenth century many peoples had won their national existence, there were still many demands not met. The Irish problem nearly led to civil war in the United Kingdom in the spring of 1914; Poles groaned under the foreign domination of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary; Finland was still a part of the Czar’s empire.

Above all, suppressed national demands threatened the life of Austria-Hungary in which eleven subject races, including Czechs, Slovaks and Italians, all demanded, with varying degrees of determination, political liberty or another allegiance. This fermentation of revolt had created in the minds of the Austrian political leaders, and in that of the aged Emperor Franz Joseph who had been on the throne since 1849, an increasingly bellicose state of mind. It was because they believed that their cumbrous Hapsburg Empire could only be held together by force that Europe was involved in war.

The main danger which the politicians of Austria-Hungary feared came from the little Slav kingdom of Serbia, which had fought so well against the Turks in the Balkan wars and whose example inspired so many of Austria’s Slav subject peoples. Austrian diplomacy had been long exercised to crush Serbia and had successfully prevented her access to the Adriatic after the second Balkan war by creating the independent kingdom of Albania. Opportunities for totally crushing Serbia would have been seized but for the fact that Serbia enjoyed Russian protection.

The heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an intelligent, rather authoritarian, moody, middle-aged man who, with his square head, melancholy eyes and large chin, looked a typical Hapsburg, whilst his hair en brosse and his upturned moustaches gave him a general resemblance to the Teutonic aristocracy and particularly to Kaiser Wilhelm. He was not popular either in Austria or Germany. His ill-humour came in part from the fact that he had married, morganatically, a Czech Countess Sophie, against his father’s will, and his wife, to whom he was devoted as he was to his children, suffered thereafter from a sort of social ostracism by imperial society.

Franz Ferdinand had liberal inclinations and believed in a plan which was seriously considered in some circles in Vienna, for turning the Dual Monarchy, in which the Austro-Germans and Hungarian-Magyars formed the ruling class, into a Triple Monarchy in which the Slav subjects of the Hapsburg Empire would have an equal share. So in Serbia the Archduke was particularly disliked as a dangerous reformer who might wean away Serbs and Croats and other southern Slav people from the true ideal of a great Serbian State.

In 1908, after the third Balkan war, Austria-Hungary had annexed the large territory known as Bosnia-Herzegovina which ran down the Adriatic coast to Albania and which had been in the hands of the Turks. It was a comparatively new acquisition that in June, 1914, the Archduke and his wife were visiting, the occasion being some important military manoeuvres. Though there were many Serbs in Bosnia, the Croat majority, mainly Catholic, was counted, in Vienna, as among the relatively loyal elements of the Empire. The Archduchess, a woman of charm and character, greatly added to the success of the tour.

The royal pair had left Vienna on Tuesday and had spent four days in Bosnia, at Ilidze, a small village connected with the important town of Sarajevo by a narrow-gauge railway. One of Franz Ferdinand’s A.D.C.s seems to have urged the Archduke, on Saturday, to return to Vienna and cut out the visit to Sarajevo. There had been rumours of assassination plots and the Archduke’s entourage was jumpy, so jumpy that a court photographer carrying a long flashlight tube had been arrested as he hid in the bushes to snap the Archduke and his wife as they passed.

On Sunday morning, after hearing Mass in a private chapel and sending a telegram to his children saying he and their mother would be with them on Tuesday next, the Archduke and Duchess caught the train to Sarajevo, inspected some troops and then climbed into the rear seats of a dark-green open car, General Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia, and Count Harrach who owned the car sitting in front. The Archduchess wore a white dress with a large hat, the Duke a light blue tunic and black trousers with a cocked hat with green ostrich plumes. Other cars with A.D.C.s and senior officers followed.

Sarajevo lies at the beginning of a plain, with some high mountains behind it to the north, on the Miljacha river. An important Turkish garrison town, it had, and still has, some fine Turkish architecture and in 1914 it had one hundred mosques. The plum trees were in blossom, and a hot sun was blazing after a heavy rain when the royal couple left the station and drove down a wide street called Appel Quay which runs along the river bank to the centre of the town.

Along the Appel Quay six young assassins, all of them Bosnians, five of them Bosnian-Serbs, had posted themselves.

Three of them, Princip, Cabrinovic and Garbez, had been trained by the Serbian Black Hand organization, whose object was the achievement of Serbian aggrandizement by violence. Though these three denied that they had ever been given instructions by the Black Hand and that the intention to murder the Archduke was theirs and theirs alone, it is certain that the three others were recruited by a Black Hand agent living in Sarajevo.

As the Archduke’s car was moving at some twenty miles per hour down the Quay, the first of the assassins did not, from fear or surprise or nearness of gendarmes, fire. But stationed on the other side of the Quay was Vaso Cabrinovic, who lobbed a home-made bomb, the cap of which he had banged on a water hydrant, on to the hood of the Archduke’s car. Franz Ferdinand had seen what Cabrinovic was doing, stood up in the car and knocked the bomb into the road, where it exploded and wounded some bystanders and occupants of the next car. Cabrinovic swallowed a phial of poison, which did not work, and jumped into the river but was soon captured. The Archduke’s chauffeur drove rapidly to the Town Hall. The other assassins, one of whom was Gavrilo Princip, did nothing.

The Archduke was extremely angry and would scarcely listen to the Mayor’s address of welcome. He refused to wait until troops were sent for to protect the procession of cars and decided he would not visit the museum which was the next place on his programme, but would drive back along the Appel Quay to the hospital where the injured were being treated. Count Harrach insisted on riding on the running board, choosing the left side. Had he stood on the right it is possible that he would have received Princip’s bullets and that a European war might have been averted. Had the chauffeur been told beforehand of the change of itinerary, the Archduke’s car would not have been halted by a bridge where the chauffeur was ordered to turn left to the hospital, back along the Appel Quay, and not right to the Museum.

It was whilst the car was stationary by the bridge and going into reverse that Gavrilo Princip, disconsolate at the failure of the attempt and waiting just in case the Archduke should reappear, was able to fire at a sitting target and from about five yards. One shot hit the Archduke in the throat, the other the Archduchess in the abdomen. The Archduchess died even before the car had reached the Governor’s house. The Archduke was dead fifteen minutes later. His last words were, “Sophie, for God’s sake stay alive for our children.”

The world heard of the Archduke’s assassination with some alarm; but little happened for three weeks, from 18 June until just before 23 July, and most of the world by that time had forgotten all about it. A violent Press campaign was conducted in Austria against Serbia, but the Kaiser had set out on one of his customary annual visits to the Baltic, the Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian and German Armies, Conrad von Hoetzendorff and Von Moltke, had gone on holiday, and so too had the German High Seas Admiral, Von Tirpitz. The French President Poincare and the Prime Minister Viviani were on a visit to Russia and were indeed returning by sea on 23 July.

A Secret Austrian Commission of Inquiry had at once begun work; it failed to find any conclusive evidence of the complicity of the Serbian Government in the plot. In Serbia a General Election was being held, and because of this and perhaps because the Government had had wind of some plot but failed to communicate its information to Vienna, no inquiry was instituted on the Serbian side.

Until 23 July even “well-informed circles” outside of Vienna were unaware that Austria intended war on Serbia. On the whole public opinion sympathized with the Austrian demand that Serbia should be punished for failure to control her national extremists. “To Hell with Serbia,” wrote Horatio Bottomley in his large-circulation weekly John Bull, The terms of the Austrian ultimatum, however, caused some alarm. They amounted, in their ten points, one of which included the temporary occupation of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, by the Austrian Army, to a demand for the abdication of Serbian independence. It was an ultimatum meant to be declined, and Austria’s intention to go to war was evident. Serbia accepted seven. of the ten points on 25 July. On 28 July the Austrian army bombarded Belgrade.

One event which had happened behind the scenes in those three weeks was of the utmost importance. On 5 July the German Kaiser received Count Hoyos on behalf of the Austrian Foreign Office, and, over lunch, told him that Germany stood behind Austria whatever steps she might take. Constitutionally the Kaiser was obliged to consult the German Chancellor, Von Bethman Hollweg, and this he did, though very informally, for he was in a hurry to start his journey to the north, during a walk in the Palace grounds that afternoon. German support for Austria in any eventuality, the probable one of war with Russia in the event of positive action against Serbia, was pledged. This enabled the Austrian Foreign Minister, Von Berchtold, and the war party to overcome the objections to a war policy with Serbia and Russia raised by the powerful Tisa, the Prime Minister of Hungary.

The German government was not shown the Austrian note, and when the rather surprisingly conciliatory Serbian reply was received, the Kaiser was relieved and thought that Austria had won a bloodless victory. Germany, on 26 and 27 July, was suddenly trying to put on the brakes. Even so the German government refused to support Sir Edward Grey’s suggestion made on 27 July that Serbia should be given more time; Grey proposed a conference of Ambassadors of the powers not directly concerned with the quarrel, Germany, Britain, France and Italy.

By then, however, the German General Staff had decided that war was to come out of this and that it was better now than a year or so later when Russia would have completed her strategic railways. Whilst the Kaiser and the German Chancellor were attempting to moderate the Austrian attitude, Von Moltke went so far as to send a telegram to the Austrian C.-in-C, urging rapid mobilization.

On 29 July, Russia concentrated troops along the Austria-Hungarian frontier. Early on 30 July, the Czar, still in contact with the Kaiser, who was now extremely anxious, ordered a partial mobilization of the Russian Army, but by the late afternoon the Russian General Staff had persuaded him to declare a general mobilization on the grounds that a partial mobilization was impractical and might lead the French to consider they were not obliged to support Russia in a local war with Austria. Russia, therefore, mobilized fully on the 31st and so took the first virtually irrevocable step. On that day Germany asked France if she would remain neutral in a conflict between Germany and Russia. The German Ambassador had instructions to demand the handing over of the fortified towns of Toul and Verdun as guarantees if France’s answer was “Yes”. But the French government answered “No” and France on 1 August decreed a general mobilization.

France was still not at war. It is possible that if the British government had announced that Britain would enter the war if France was involved, the war could have been averted. The British Cabinet was divided and so was public opinion: Britain was not absolutely pledged to support France. But whatever Britain’s attitude, the die was really cast in Berlin.

Before Germany’s declaration of war on France on 2 August, the German government sent a note to Belgium demanding the passage of German troops through the national territory. The war plan of the German General Staff against France, the Schlieffen Plan, consisted in the turning of the French army, concentrated on the Franco-German frontiers, on its left flank by a rapid movement through Belgium. On 1 August the Kaiser, hoping to secure British neutrality, tried to persuade Von Moltke to abandon this offensive against France through Belgium and to concentrate on the Eastern Front. Von Moltke replied that this was militarily impossible; thousands of trains were already speeding towards the West and the Belgium frontier and to alter the war plan now would simply mean chaos. Britain, he thought, would not come in.

It was the violation of Belgian neutrality, guaranteed by all the powers, that brought a now unanimous Britain into the war on 4 August. Even Von Moltke when he heard the news was abashed, for now Germany and Austria (without Italy who declined to follow their lead) had to face a powerful coalition in the West as well as the vast might of Russia in the East. The Kaiser exclaimed pathetically about his uncle Edward VII whom he had hated, “Edward dead is more powerful than I am, alive.”

This story of how war actually began does enable one to pin down responsibility more closely. The unwise German Emperor allowed the weak Dual Monarchy to believe that Germany would support it unconditionally against Serbia. The German Emperor had second thoughts but not so the German General Staff. The Czar might have delayed a general mobilization and again diplomacy might have intervened, but the Russian military leaders over-ruled him. This was the basic cause, weak, despotic emperors in Central Europe, and strong generals.

England might have made a more vigorous attempt to preserve the peace in July if her pacific-minded Cabinet had not been preoccupied with Ireland or if she had had at that time a leader of the greatness of a Disraeli or a Gladstone. It was the tragedy of Europe that in the important countries there were no political leaders outstanding enough to control the military machines. So Europe blundered into a war which was to be the suicide of an epoch. No one, and least of all the rulers of Central Europe, had the imagination to foresee what kind of a war it was going to be or what would be its consequences.