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Kimberly

Kimberly Tilley rescues forgotten stories of early twentieth century America from obscurity. Her books, Grievous Deeds (2023); Has it Come to This? (2022), Cold Heart (2020), and The Poisoned Glass (2019) were Amazon category best-sellers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and India.
Kimberly owns OldSpirituals.com. She's very grateful for the wonderful community and two outstanding contributors to help fulfill the site's mission of rescuing fascinating stories from obscurity.
Kimberly is the cofounder of Pivot Talent Development LLC, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. PIVOT offers workshops, training, consulting, and coaching to help professionals improve performance, drive business impact, and transcend limitations.

Latest posts by Kimberly (see all)

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If our destinies are written before we’re born, Gavrilo Princip was dealt one of the worst hands any human ever received. That isn’t the case though. Whatever our hereditary traits and surroundings may influence us to do, we still have free will. 

On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo was a poor 19-year-old Serbian student. Maybe he was lonely too. He joined Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia) whose aim was to liberate the South Slavs from Austro-Hungarian rule.

He became part of a group of assassins the Black Hand armed for the purpose of murdering the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria during his royal visit to Sarajevo.

Gavrilo Princip

The Archduke and his wife Sophie, Duchess von Hohenberg, made a narrow escape that morning. One of Pricip’s co-conspirators, Nedeljko Čabrinović, who threw a grenade at the open car the royal couple was traveling in. The bomb exploded, but it injured the people in the next car. While the victims were spirited away to the hospital, the Archduke and Sophie were rushed to the governor’s home.

This picture shows the royal couple ascending the stairs to the governor’s mansion. Franz Ferdinand exclaimed indignantly, “So you welcome your guests with bombs!”

Wikimedia

After visiting with the governor, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie wanted to visit the hospital where the injured people had been taken.  The drivers were not told about the stop until they were en route to their next destination. At 10:45 a.m., the small entourage halted on a narrow street and began to back up. One of the cars stalled.

Gavrilo Princip was sitting at a cafe across the street. He recognized the Archduke and hurried across the street. When he got to their open car, he said nothing but raised his gun, shooting the Archduke in the neck and Sophie in the stomach. Blood began to seep out of Franz Ferdinand’s mouth and covered his uniform.

wikimedia

Sophie began to sob and cried, “For Heaven’s sake! What happened to you?”

Franz leaned over his wife. “Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder!”  (Sophie, Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!)

But Sophie fell forward. The aides crowding around the vehicle did not realize she had been shot, and assumed she had fainted in terror. The Archduke slumped over as well. His jaunty plumed hat fell from his head and the green feathers came loose and drifted down slowly to cover the bodies of the royal couple.

Count Harrach helped the Archduke sit up and braced him, asking, “Leiden Eure Kaiserliche Hoheit sehr?” (Is Your Imperial Highness suffering very badly?)

“Es ist nichts.”  (It is nothing.) “Es ist nichts.”  They were Franz Ferdinand’s last words and he repeated them like a lullaby in a voice that grew fainter and fainter.  He and his wife were mortally wounded. “Es ist nichts.”

By the time their car arrived at the hospital, its royal occupants were dead.

The Archduke and Sophie with their children:

Wikimedia

Princip was apprehended at the scene. He was shoved to the ground; his pistol was seized. Having determined earlier that, if he had his chance and succeeded, he did not want to face justice, Princip was prepared for this circumstance. He produced a cyanide capsule and managed to swallow it.

Gavrilo Princip’s first act of cowardice–murdering a defenseless couple sitting in their car–set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the Great War, which in turn extinguished the lives of 22 million people.

His final act of cowardice–suicide by swallowing cyanide–was not rewarded with an easy escape from all consequences. Princip survived it somehow.

An undated picture shows Gavrilo Princip (first row-C) and other members of the “Mlada Bosna” revolutionary group in court. AFP PHOTO/HISTORICAL ARCHIVES OF SARAJEVO

At his trial, the defendant refused to express remorse. “I do not feel like a criminal, because I put away the one who was doing evil. Austria represents evil for our people.”

Habsburg law required criminals to be at least 20 years old at the time of the crime to be executed, so when Princip was found guilty of murder and high treason on October 28, 1914, he received a 20-year sentence.

Princip was diagnosed with consumption shortly afterwards. One of his arms was amputated but it was not enough to save him. He died from the disease on April 28, 1918, less than four years after murdering the Archduke and Duchess.

According to psychiatric evaluations, Princip believed he was a noble man, whose actions were justified. “I regret nothing,” he stated. That included World War I, since Princip took no responsibility for it. Of course, the war was inevitable by then but a decent person might feel badly about personally lighting the dynamite.

On just one point did Princip express remorse. He claimed he killed the Duchess unintentionally and expressed sadness about her death. I don’t feel inclined to give Gavrilo Princip the benefit of the doubt but who knows? Maybe it’s true. It’s exasperating that it never occurred to this insubstantial man that Sophie may not want to live without her husband, whom Princip most certainly did intend to kill.