Sarajevo, June 28, 1914
The sun burned over the cobblestone streets of Sarajevo as if the city itself was holding its breath.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, sat beside his wife, Sophie, in an open-top Gräf & Stift touring car. The route had been printed in the morning papers, as if fate itself had published its itinerary. It was meant to be a simple procession—a show of imperial presence, of unity in a region always on the edge of unrest.
But the empire was a house of glass built atop a minefield.
Six young men lined the motorcade's path that morning, all part of the Black Hand, a secret Serbian nationalist group. Among them was Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old with a weak body, sunken cheeks, and the fire of revolution smoldering behind hollow eyes.
At 10:10 a.m., a conspirator named Nedeljko Čabrinović hurled a hand grenade toward the Archduke's car. It bounced off the folded roof and exploded beneath the next vehicle, injuring several officers. Franz Ferdinand's procession sped away, shaken but alive.
Later that morning, against security advice, the Archduke insisted on visiting the injured at the hospital. A miscommunication rerouted his car down the wrong street.
That was all the opening history needed.
At 10:45 a.m., as the car stopped to reverse on Franz Josef Street, Princip stepped from the shadows outside Moritz Schiller's café. He didn't hesitate. He didn't scream. He raised his FN Model 1910 pistol and fired two shots.
The first bullet pierced Sophie's abdomen. She gasped, clutched her husband's arm, and collapsed.
The second struck Franz Ferdinand in the neck.
He turned to his wife. His last words: "Sophie! Sophie! Don't die! Stay alive for our children!"
She was already gone.
He died minutes later.
The city froze. The empire shuddered.
And the world began to burn.