Sam Eastland - Red Icon

As the Archduke’s motorcade made its way across the city, one of the assassins, a man named Nedeljko Cabrinovic, threw a hand grenade under the car. The grenade had a ten-second fuse and, by the time it exploded, the Archduke’s saloon had already passed by. The bomb detonated beneath a car which was travelling behind the Archduke, injuring several of his retinue and a number of nearby civilians.

Cabrinovic ran for his life, chased by police and outraged members of the public. Unable to outpace his pursuers, he swallowed a vial of poison and jumped off a bridge into the Miljacka River. The poison failed to work. Cabrinovic was hauled out of the water, which was less than a foot deep at that time of year, and nearly beaten to death by the crowd.

Although he was advised against it, the Archduke decided to continue his tour of the city, during which time his motorcade passed by several other members of the band who had sworn to kill him. But confronted by the physical presence of a man and a woman who had, until that moment, been only symbols to them, the assassins hesitated, one after the other, and the moment for action was lost.

An hour later, by which time he had covered most of his planned tour, the Archduke ordered his chauffeur, Leopold Lojka, to proceed to the hospital where those who had been injured earlier in the day were being treated.

Princip, considered by the other members of the Black Hand to be the least reliable of their number, was standing outside Moritz Schiller’s restaurant when the Archduke’s car drove past on its way to the hospital.

It was 10.55 a.m.

The street was bustling with pedestrians, slowing the Archduke’s progress, and a local governor, Oskar Potiorek, shouted to the chauffeur that he should have taken a different route instead.

The chauffeur, who was unfamiliar with the city, became confused and attempted to back up, but stalled the car when putting it into reverse, almost directly in front of where Princip was waiting.

Faced with this opportunity, and contrary to the expectations of his fellow assassins, Princip decided to carry out his sworn duty.

Believing that he lacked the courage to shoot the couple in cold blood, Princip initially made up his mind to throw a hand grenade, but there were so many people crowding the sidewalk that Princip doubted he would have enough room to throw the bomb and still escape the blast. Instead, he drew his pistol, stepped out into the street, and leapt on to the running board, which acted as a step for passengers climbing in and out of the vehicle. Princip fired the gun without aiming. He was even seen to close his eyes, turning his head to the side as he pulled the trigger twice. Before he could fire a third shot, Princip was dragged to the ground by a guard of the local militia named Smail Spahovic.

Hauled away to prison, Princip would die there four years later, wasted away from the effects of tuberculosis.

Within days of the assassinations, Austria had delivered a series of ultimatums to Serbia, a country only a fraction the size of the Habsburg Empire. When Serbia attempted to negotiate the details of the ultimatum, Austria responded by sending troops across the border to occupy the country.

The incursion by the Habsburgs into what Russia considered a ‘buffer state’ between itself and the potential threat of invasion by a western army forced the Tsar to begin mobilising his troops. It was no secret, to the Russians or anyone else, that at least six weeks would be required for Russia to bring its army into full preparedness for war. In that length of time, Germany and Austria-Hungary could not only mobilise their troops but could have launched a full-scale invasion. It was vital to the Russians, therefore, that they began mobilising first, if they were to have any hope of defending their country.

But Germany had plans of its own.

If Russia began to mobilise, Germany military policy dictated that the Kaiser must order his own troops to prepare for battle.

With such inflexible strategies in place, the outbreak of war became a foregone conclusion. Long-standing alliances between Britain, France and Russia on one hand, and Germany, Turkey and Austria-Hungary on the other, assured that hostilities would spread.

Too late, the Tsar came to understand that his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm, had wanted this war all along. Surrounded by the weak and sagging Empires of the Ottomans and Habsburgs, and with only a fraction of the colonies possessed by France and Britain, Wilhelm felt that it was time for Germany to claim an empire for itself. The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand provided him with exactly the catalyst he needed to set in motion the Schlieffen Plan, by which the German Army could strike first at France and the West, before swinging east to devastate the Army of the Tsar. The Tsar appealed to the Kaiser to act as an intermediary between Russia and the Austrians, but Wilhelm had no intention of brokering a peace deal. Nicholas’s attempts to avoid hostilities were simply viewed as weakness by his German cousin, who responded by demanding that Russia demobilise its army, even as his own prepared to fight. To this, the Tsar could not agree. Doing so would have left his borders unprotected against two nations, whose armies were already deployed. Reluctantly, the Tsar instructed his Foreign Minister, Sergei Sazonov, that Russia would be going to war.

‘I solemnly swear,’ announced the Tsar, as he drew his declaration to a close, ‘that I will never make peace so long as one of the enemy is on the soil of the fatherland.’ This was the same oath Tsar Alexander I had taken when Napoleon’s troops invaded in 1812 and, months later, froze to a halt at Borodino, only a few days’ march from Moscow.

Carefully, the Tsar folded the piece of paper and returned it to his pocket. Then, with his wife at his side, he began the long walk to the end of the hall, where a balcony looked out over Palace Square, in which thousands of Russians had been waiting for this moment.

As Nicholas and Alexandra passed between the ranks of courtiers, those standing on either side began to applaud. At first, the clapping was uncertain and sporadic. No one seemed sure of what to do. But now the applause began to spread, until it echoed like thunder in the room. Encouraged, the Tsar quickened his pace. The weight of this monumental decision, which had hung on him for days while he tried hopelessly to negotiate a way out of hostilities, now seemed to rise from him and dissipate among the chandeliers.

Pekkala stood beside the balcony, just inside the hall. He had positioned himself there at the beginning of the ceremony, in the hope that it might be more bearable than sweltering in the centre of the room. He did not care for crowded places, and would gladly have stayed away, even from such an historic occasion, if the Tsar had not demanded his presence.

Now, as the Tsar stepped out on to the balcony, he turned and caught Pekkala’s eye. Immediately, the creases vanished from his forehead and the clenched muscles of his jaw relaxed. The only time he ever felt truly safe was in the presence of the Emerald Eye.

As soon as the Tsar stepped out on to the balcony, a roar went up from the square which drowned out even the hammering of palms inside the hall. If the Tsar had planned to speak a few words to the crowd, he soon thought better of it. To those below, no voice on earth could have been heard above that roar of celebration.

The Tsar stood beside a huge stone pillar, dwarfed by a shield bearing the Imperial crest which hung from the white metal railings. Unnerved by the long drop to the flagstoned street below, he gripped the railing firmly with one hand and, with the other, saluted the crowd. Glimpsing the pale moon of his palm, the cheering of the masses doubled and redoubled, until Pekkala could feel its vibration in his bones, as if he were standing on a platform as a train raced past the station.