The assassins can be traced back to the Serbian capital Belgrade, where each of the six young men who waited for the hapless Archduke in Sarajevo along the pre-published official route were radicalised by Serbian nationalist and irredentist organizations. Why did the Archduke become a victim of a violent conspiracy? However, we do not remember these acts of violence because their consequences were less serious on the other hand, we remember the date and place of this infamous assassination in Sarajevo because the events that followed it led directly into the First World War. Other royal assassination victims included the Serbian King Alexandar and his wife in 1903, the Italian King Umberto in 1900, and the Greek King George I in 1913. The murder of the Archduke caused widespread international outrage even though assassinations of prominent individuals were rather more common than they are today: for example, the Austrian Emperor, Kaiser Franz Joseph, nearly succumbed to an assassin in Sarajevo in May 1910, while an Italian anarchist had murdered his wife Empress Elizabeth.

Right until the last moment, some European statesmen were desperately trying to avoid an escalation of the crisis by advocating mediation, while others did everything in their power to ensure that a war would break out. However, a European war was not inevitable. The assassination has been described as the spark that would set light to a continent that was riddled with international tensions. The murder of the royal couple ushered in the so-called July Crisis which ended with the outbreak of war in August 1914. This outrageous act of brutality was aimed at undermining the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had annexed Bosnia into its multi-ethnic Empire in 1908. To understand the importance of this event, imagine the Prince of Wales and his wife being assassinated while visiting a dominion of the British Empire. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. Find out more about The Open University's History courses and qualifications

Ww1 archduke