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In 1913, following the unexpected success of the Serbians in the war against the
Ottomans, the Austrian military governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek, declared a
state of emergency, dissolved the parliament, imposed martial rule and banned all
Serbian public, cultural, and educational societies. Inspired by a spate of
assassination attempts against Imperial officials by Slavic nationalists and
anarchists, Princip convinced two other young Bosnians to join a plot to
assassinate the heir to the Habsburg Empire during his announced visit to Sarajevo.
The Black Hand, a Serbian secret society with ties to Serbian military
intelligence, provided the conspirators with weapons and training before
facilitating their re-entry into Bosnia.
On Sunday 28 June 1914 during the royal couple's visit to Sarajevo, the then-
teenager Princip mortally wounded both Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by
firing a pistol into their convertible car that had unexpectedly stopped 5 feet
(1.5 m) from him. Princip was arrested immediately and tried alongside twenty-four
others, all Bosnians and thus Austro-Hungarian subjects. At his trial, Princip
stated: "I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs,
and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free from Austria." Princip
was spared the death penalty because of his age (19) and sentenced to twenty years
in prison. He was imprisoned at the Terezín fortress. The Serbian government itself
did not inspire the assassination but the Austrian Foreign Office and Army used the
murders as a reason for a preventive war which led directly to World War I.
Early life[edit]
Gavrilo Princip was born in the remote hamlet of Obljaj, near Bosansko Grahovo, on
25 July [O.S. 13 July] 1894. He was the second of his parents' nine children, six
of whom died in infancy. Princip's mother Marija wanted to name him after her late
brother, Špiro, but he was named Gavrilo at the insistence of a local Eastern
Orthodox priest, who claimed that naming the sickly infant after the Archangel
Gabriel would help him survive.[1]