"Mr. Mayor, I came here on a visit, and I am greeted with bombs. It is outrageous!" Exclaimed a very stressed Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Looking at the Archduke's clothes, it was easy to understand why he stormed Sarajevo's Town Hall and interrupted Mayor Fehim Čurčić. He and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were covered in blood, dust and soot. The couple had just survived an assassination attempt.
A man threw a bomb at the couple's car. Fortunately for the Austro-Hungarian royalness, the bomb bounced their car and fell on the street, exploding the next vehicle of the motorcade.
Sophie whispered something into her husband's ear; after a couple of seconds, he said, "now you may speak."
Fehim Čurčić made his speech, but neither Franz Ferdinand nor Sophie paid any attention.
Sophie was half in shock, half worrying for her and her husband's life. The Archduke, on the other hand, was thinking: I should've listened to all my advisors. They all told me Sarajevo was a dangerous place for me.
After the Mayor, it was time for the Archduke's speech.
Franz Ferdinand read the words he brought with him. The crowd cheered every last one of them; he felt loved. The ovations made him add some words to the speech, "I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination."
After the Archduke concluded his address, the authorities gathered to discuss what to do next. The day had more appointments scheduled for Sophie and her husband, but the bomb was still blowing on everyone's mind.
"You should stay here, at Town Hall, until we get troops to line the streets," suggested the Archduke's chamberlain, Baron Rumerskirch.
Franz Ferdinand, intoxicated by the love shown by the Sarajevans, opposed that idea. But he gladly accepted a change of plans; he would not follow his schedule. Instead, he would visit the ones injured by the bomb that had his name on it.
Rumerskirch didn't like that idea; he thought the Archduke wasn't safe without the troops.
However, Governor-General Oskar Potiorek—who vetoed Rumerskirch's idea—asked, "Do you think that Sarajevo is full of assassins?"
THE END
*****
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. Princip was one of a group of six assassins also containing Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović and Trifko Grabež (one Bosniak and five Serbs consecutively) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The conspirators' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia. The assassination led directly to World War I when Austria-Hungary subsequently issued an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia, which was partially rejected. Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia, triggering actions leading to war between most European states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand
