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==Assassination of Franz Ferdinand==
==Assassination of Franz Ferdinand==
In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, nephew and designated successor of Emperor Franz Josef I, visited Bosnia to attend military maneuvers and represent the monarchy to its relatively new subjects there. The trip was advertised well in advance, leading members of a quasi-terrorist Serbian nationalist group known as the Black Hand, which advocated Serbian annexation of Bosnia and its heavily Serb population, to plot the archduke's assassination. (Ironically, Franz Ferdinand had opposed Austrian takeover of Bosnia, seeing the region as more trouble than it was worth.)<ref>Sean McMeekin, ''July 1914: Countdown to War''. New York: Basic Books, 2013, p. 5.</ref> Supported by radical elements within the Serbian armed forces, several members of the Black Hand, armed with bombs and pistols, placed themselves in the streets of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, as the archduke's motorcade proceeded through the city on the morning of Sunday, June 28.<ref>Sidney Fay, ''The Origins of the World War,'' vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 1935, p. 89, 117.</ref> An initial attack on the archduke's car with a bomb was unsuccessful, the projectile exploding in the road behind it; a short time later, however, one of the Black Hand conspirators, [[Gavrilo Princip]], finding himself within close range of the vehicle, fired several shots that fatally wounded both Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. Both would die minutes later.
In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, nephew and designated successor of Emperor Franz Josef I, visited Bosnia to attend military maneuvers and represent the monarchy to its relatively new subjects there. The trip was advertised well in advance, leading members of a quasi-terrorist Serbian nationalist group known as the Black Hand, which advocated Serbian annexation of Bosnia and its heavily Serb population, to plot the archduke's assassination. (Ironically, Franz Ferdinand had opposed Austrian takeover of Bosnia, seeing the region as more trouble than it was worth.)<ref>Sean McMeekin, ''July 1914: Countdown to War''. New York: Basic Books, 2013, p. 5.</ref> Supported by radical elements within the Serbian armed forces, several members of the Black Hand, armed with bombs and pistols, placed themselves in the streets of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, as the archduke's motorcade proceeded through the city on the morning of Sunday, June 28.<ref>Sidney Fay, ''The Origins of the World War,'' vol. 2. New York: Macmillan, 1935, p. 89, 117.</ref> An initial attack on the archduke's car with a bomb was unsuccessful, the projectile exploding in the road behind it; a short time later, however, one of the Black Hand conspirators, [[Gavrilo Princip]], finding himself within close range of the vehicle, fired several shots that fatally wounded both Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. Both would die minutes later.
==Reactions==
Outside of Austria-Hungary, the initial response to the archduke's murder was relatively muted. Many of the Great Powers were dealing with their own internal problems (in France, fallout from recent elections; in Britain, a growing crisis over the extension of [[Home Rule]] to [[Ireland]]), and Russia, whose relations with Austria-Hungary had long been in poor shape, scarcely went to the trouble of expressing official condolences.<ref>McMeekin, ''July 1914'', p. 47-8.</ref> Even within the Austrian court, there was little in the way of personal grief; though he had been friends with the Foreign Minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold, and some other government officials, relations between Franz Ferdinand and Emperor Franz Josef were frosty at best: the monarch's initial response to the news was said to be simply "It is God's will."<ref>Luigi Albertini, ''The Origins of the War of 1914'', trans. Isabella Massey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952, vol. 2, p. 116.</ref> Nonetheless, as Franz Ferdinand had been the heir apparent, his killing was regarded as an outrage by the government, especially as it had come at the hands of Serbian terrorists; now a significant power within the Balkans, Serbia's aggressiveness had exasperated Austrian leaders, many of whom--especially Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff--had been for years clamoring for a punitive war that would crush Serbia and indirectly reduce Russian influence in the region. As news of the archduke's murder sank in, Franz Josef agreed that some kind of action to punish Serbia was necessary; however, because Russian intervention in favor of Serbia might become a factor, he and his ministers felt it necessary to obtain the support of their more powerful German ally.
'''The "Blank Check"'''
Having had a long personal friendship with Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Kaiser of Imperial Germany, [[Wilhelm II]], was probably more deeply angered by the news from Sarajevo than any other European sovereign. Though mildly friendly to the Serbs beforehand, he now wrote, just two days after the assassination, that "matters must be cleared up with the Serbs {i.e., by military action}, and that right soon."<ref>McMeekin, ''July 1914'', p. 99.</ref> Thus, when visited on July 5 by Austro-Hungarian ambassador Count Ladislaus de Szögyény-Marich, Wilhelm was prepared to seriously discuss the possibility of punitive war in the Balkans. Although the kaiser warned that he could not give definitive support to such a policy without consulting his Chancellor, Count Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, he added that in his own opinion, Austria ought to undertake military action against Serbia right away, and that if this led to a war with Russia, the Austrians could count on German support. These statements were substantially endorsed by Chancellor Bethmann himself in conversations with Szögyény the following day.<ref>Ibid, 113, 117.</ref> These twin endorsements have since been described by historians as a "blank check" from Germany for Austrian war with Serbia (though it was assumed that the Austrians would launch such a war at once, and that it would be limited to, at the most, a German-Austrian-Russian-Serbian conflict).
==References==
==References==