Gavrilo Princip

Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918) was a Bosnian Serb student and revolutionary whose assassination of Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, served as the immediate catalyst for World War I.

Early Life and South Slavic Nationalism

Princip was born in the remote village of Obljaj in western Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of nine children—six of whom died in infancy—born to impoverished Serb peasant farmers. Although frail and bookish as a child, he excelled in literature and history when sent to study in Sarajevo. In 1908, Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, dashing hopes that the region might unite with neighboring Serbia. Outraged by Habsburg rule, Princip joined Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), a revolutionary student movement seeking the liberation and unification of South Slavic peoples. Expelled from school in 1912 for participating in anti-Habsburg demonstrations, he walked 280 kilometers to Belgrade, hoping to fight in the Balkan Wars, though he was rejected by Serbian guerrilla commanders for his small stature and weak health.

The Sarajevo Assassination

When news broke that Archduke Franz Ferdinand would inspect military maneuvers in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914—Vidovdan (St. Vitus's Day), the sacred anniversary of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo—Princip and five young accomplices resolved to assassinate him. Equipped with Browning pistols and hand grenades supplied by contacts within the Serbian military secret society known as the 'Black Hand,' the conspirators lined the motorcade route along the Appel Quay. That morning, fellow conspirator Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a grenade that bounced off the Archduke's convertible and injured officers in the following car. Believing the plot had failed, Princip stood near Moritz Schiller's delicatessen on Franz Josef Street. Moments later, the Archduke's driver—unaware that the route had been changed to visit wounded officers at the hospital—made a wrong turn directly in front of Princip and braked to reverse. Stepping up to the stationary car, Princip fired two shots from a distance of five feet, fatally wounding both Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie.

Trial, Imprisonment, and Death

Princip immediately tried to swallow a vial of cyanide, which had expired and only made him vomit, before bystanders knocked the pistol from his hand. At his trial in Sarajevo in October 1914, he stated that his sole aim was the unification of all Yugoslavs and the liberation of his people from Austria-Hungary. Under Austro-Hungarian law, the death penalty could not be imposed on anyone under the age of twenty at the time of the offense; having been born twenty-seven days too late, Princip escaped execution and received the maximum sentence of twenty years' harsh imprisonment. Chained in a damp cell at Theresienstadt Fortress in Bohemia, he suffered from severe malnutrition and skeletal tuberculosis that required the amputation of his right arm. Weighing barely 40 kilograms, he died on April 28, 1918, just seven months before the collapse of the empires his two pistol shots had set on the path to destruction.