Early indications of Princip’s wider commitment beyond pure Serb nationalism can be seen in a letter he wrote in 1912, which revealed the fault lines that had already developed within political opinion. It referred to how, as a supporter of south-Slav nationalism, he had been attacked while still at school in Sarajevo by those Serb students who were only interested in their own kind. He wrote of how, for voicing his wider south-Slav commitment, he was insulted ‘with the worst expressions, objecting that we were not Serbs. This caused a deep breach and hatred between us.’ Princip continued to associate with Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats right up to the assassination of 1914; indeed, a key introduction was made in Belgrade, when the decision was taken to procure weapons, by a man called Djulaga Bukovac, one of the many Bosnian Muslim radicals then active in the city.
At his trial and during the police investigation Princip consistently said that, even though he was an ethnic Serb, his commitment was to freeing all south Slavs. ‘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,’ he told the courtroom. ‘The plan was to unite all south Slavs. It was understood that Serbia as the free part of the south Slavs had the moral duty to help in the unification, to be to the south Slavs as the Piedmont was to Italy.’ When later asked about how south Slavs should regard the Habsburg Empire, he replied: ‘In my opinion every Serb, Croat and Slovene should be an enemy of Austria.’ Later in his prison cell he clung to the same goal, sharing his thoughts with Dr Pappenheim. ‘The ideal of the young people was the unity of the south-Slav peoples, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, but not under Austria. In a kind of state, republic or something of that sort,’ the doctor recorded in his notes.
Princip can be accused of being unrealistic, of being utopian, of not thinking through how the ideal of south-Slav unity might be realised, or how the rights of the large community of fellow south Slavs who had converted to Islam could be protected. But he cannot be accused of acting out of an interest in purely Serb nationalism. In the early years of the twentieth century he was not alone, for all over the Balkans – from Slovenia in the north, through Zagreb and Sarajevo, all the way south through Belgrade – there existed a significant body of opinion that all south Slavs should live as one after ridding themselves of the foreign occupier. With a hundred years of hindsight (not least the fighting of the 1990s that destroyed Yugoslavia), it is fair to say that the south Slav or Yugoslav ideal proved to be a failure. But Princip’s commitment to it should not be ignored, and the mistake should not be made of saying that he was nothing but a Serb nationalist. The difference might appear arcane, but to my eye – as someone proud to come from the United Kingdom – it feels like the difference between being willing to fight for Britain and the reductionism of being a nationalist interested solely in one of its component parts, whether England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
As I explored Belgrade, a city that commemorates its national heroes so proudly, it was clear that Princip’s Yugoslav views represented something of a conundrum. I would often see walls daubed with nationalist graffiti that referred to key dates in Serbian history, from the Middle Ages to the 1990s. There was never any mention of Princip. Hawkers in Kalemegdan Park sold self-published books that promised the ‘truth about Srebrenica’, denying that any war crimes were ever committed by the Serbian side; and hagiographies of Bosnian Serb leaders such as Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, rightly regarded by most objective observers as war criminals. There were no books about Princip, his commitment to the Serbian cause not being pure enough to be worthy of recognition. He was the ethnic Serb who had had greater impact on world history than any other and yet, with the exception of the signs marking Gavrilo Princip Street, I saw no statues, no plaques and very little interest when I trawled the archives. When I went to the Serb National Archive the young receptionist barely looked up from the comic he was reading, while listening to the Rolling Stones playing through some speakers on his desk. ‘We have nothing on Princip,’ he said before going back to his comic. ‘Maybe you should try the Yugoslav Archive.’
One sunny afternoon I took tea with Ljubodrag Dimić, a professor of history from Belgrade University, and asked him why Princip is not proudly commemorated within the Serbian pantheon. ‘The thing you must remember is that the Mlada Bosna movement that Princip belonged to is not typical of other nationalist movements of the Balkans,’ he said. ‘It was not purely a Serbian model of nationalism, more a romantic, inclusive model along the lines of Germany or France – one that sought to create something that had not been there before, one that brought together, in the case of Germany, Germans of all faiths, Catholic or Protestant. Mlada Bosna supported what you might call a south-Slav myth, one that presented a new, inclusive model for life, a style of living, of music, of poetry that was different from the individual nationalist models of the Serbs or the Croats, say. It was mythical, and although it was clear Princip was a hero who gave his life for the future of Yugoslavia, as that myth became manipulated, so his story became manipulated. When the interest died for Yugoslavia, so did the interest in Princip.’
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On one level the plot to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and second only in imperial rank to his uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, was relatively straightforward. At a time when assassination was a common driver for political change across the Balkans, Princip and his associates from Mlada Bosna had discussed for some time how they might emulate the example of their hero, Bogdan Žerajić, by killing a senior figure from within the occupying power. Princip told Dr Pappenheim that in 1913 the figure they initially planned to go after was General Oskar Potiorek, the authoritarian colonial governor of Bosnia. But in the spring of 1914 a much more tempting target presented itself, when Princip was shown at one of Belgrade’s downmarket cafés a newspaper cutting that had been sent anonymously to a Bosnian friend, Nedeljko Čabrinović.
The cutting announced that in late June Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be making an official visit to Bosnia in his formal capacity as inspector general of Austria–Hungary’s armed forces. Čabrinović later described how he spotted Princip dancing a traditional Serbian dance at the Acorn Wreath café, before showing him the piece of newsprint. ‘I attached no importance to that communication . . . I did not think it would play such a significant role in my life,’ he said.
For Princip this was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He would lead a group of assassins back across the Drina in time to launch an attack on the Archduke during his official visit to Sarajevo. It would be his grand gesture – one that would strike back against the outsider in the name of all south Slavs under occupation and prove once and for all that he was no weakling. The young idealist hoped the killing would inspire a swell of south-Slav feeling that would one day drive out the occupier, although quite how this would eventually be achieved was not of much importance to him. Striking back at the occupier was what counted most. All the evidence showed that Princip was the driving force behind the subsequent plot, persuading Čabrinović to join him, along with his old schoolmate and the young man he was photographed with in the park, Trifko Grabež. Over the next weeks the three of them met repeatedly around Green Wreath Square to plot, sworn to secrecy and constantly vigilant against spies who might betray them either to the Austro-Hungarians or to a Serbian government anxious not to provoke its imperial neighbour.
To acquire weapons the penniless group of plotters trusted a Bosnian Muslim, Djulaga Bukovac, who had trained with the Serbian guerrillas fighting in the Balkan Wars, to make a discreet approach to a man called Milan Ciganović, another veteran and one who was known to be well connected within Serbian paramilitary groups. After some discussions, most of which took place in and around Green Wreath Square, Ciganović said he was willing to provide some grenades, but Princip said this would not be enough. Grenades were not the most reliable tool for an assassination because of the variable
time-lapse between priming the weapon and its detonation. He demanded pistols as well.
After referring back to his own contacts, Ciganović agreed to also supply pistols and ammunition, leading the would-be assassins on several occasions to an unpopulated forest called Topčider, just beyond the centre of Belgrade, which was then relatively small. There he showed the young Bosnians how to use the grenades: small metal blocks about the same size and shape as a flattened bottle, with a protective cover on the firing cap. Once the cover was unscrewed, the user would break the cap by striking it against something solid, like a rock, to start the detonation process. The user then had a few seconds to throw the grenade before it blew up. The pistols were 9mm Browning semi-automatics, originally a Belgian design and a weapon that was common among soldiers fighting for the Serbian army in the Balkan Wars. The would-be assassins took it in turns to fire at targets nailed to tree trunks in Topčider. Princip showed himself to be the best marksman.
The area where they trained has since been swallowed by the spread of Belgrade, although a small section is retained today as Topčider Park. It takes about an hour to reach the park on foot from the city centre, and as I walked there and explored its shaded footpaths, now the domain of joggers and dog-walkers, I tried to picture the scene in the early summer of 1914 when shots from the young men boomed through these same trees. As I had found out, Princip was motivated by the dream of forging Yugoslavia, a country where all south Slavs could live freely as one, and I smiled wryly at what I found in the park. Tito, the dictator who used communism to keep Yugoslavia together in the decades after the Second World War, lies buried there under a slab of white marble in a mausoleum that is open to visitors. He died in 1980 and, with him, the dream of Yugoslavia. When I joined a tour party processing past his tomb I noticed that an old map of Titoist Yugoslavia had been defaced. Sarajevo had been scratched out.
Ciganović did not just provide the three-man assassination team with weapons. He also gave them the means to smuggle themselves back across the Drina into Bosnia, handing them an envelope containing a note to be given to one of his army friends in the town of Šabac in western Serbia, close to the border with Bosnia.
The role played by Ciganović in helping Princip and his comrades complicates an otherwise straightforward plot. Ciganović was a Freemason, a discovery that led the Austro-Hungarian authorities at the trial following the assassination to suggest that the plot to kill the Archduke might have been hatched by the Freemasons, a theory that has since been discounted. But he was also an associate of the Black Hand, the secretive, ultra-nationalist Serbian group dating back to the start of the twentieth century that had been responsible for the regicide of 1903. The role of the Black Hand in the assassination of 1914 has been the subject of weighty analysis by academics and historians, although very little is undisputed. It is accepted that the weapons provided to the assassins came from the Black Hand with the blessing of its overall leader, Dragutin Dimitrijević, a powerful éminence grise in the Serbian security apparatus in the years running up to the First World War. Better known by his pseudonym, Apis, he was a Serb nationalist hardliner who held senior positions within Serbian military intelligence, an organisation that was used to running agents in and out of Bosnia through a network of couriers and smugglers. It was this network that was made available to Princip and his two colleagues.
It does not follow that the Serbian government knew about the assassination, still less approved of it. The hardline stance of the Black Hand group was not shared by a government that had shown from as far back as the annexation crisis of 1908 a reluctance to antagonise Austria–Hungary. Indeed, these disagreements would ultimately lead in 1917 to Apis being tried for treason by his own government, a crime that carried a death sentence. During the hearing he made extravagant and unproven claims about the central role of the Black Hand in the 1914 assassination, claiming his group had been responsible for the entire operation. While some historians have accepted Apis’s claim, I accept Dedijer’s analysis that it was greatly exaggerated by a man seeking to save himself from execution. It did not work. He died at the hands of a firing squad on 26 June 1917.
Decades later, further claims were made that Princip himself was a member of the Black Hand, although there is no evidence to substantiate this. The claims were recorded in the 1930s by the Italian historian Luigi Albertini, who dedicated the last years of his life to explaining the origins of the First World War, and have been used by those historians who conclude that the assassination was entirely the work of the Black Hand.
In my view, the group played a secondary, opportunist role in the assassination of 1914, after being approached through Ciganović by the three young Bosnians who had concocted the plan. Princip’s commitment to freeing all south Slavs meant that he did not have the same ultimate objectives as the Black Hand, which was more exclusively committed to Serbian interests. At his trial he gave a very pragmatic answer when asked if everyone involved in the assassination shared the same aims as himself. ‘Not exactly like myself,’ he said. ‘It was not necessary for all to be of the same opinions in the carrying out of his own ideas, nor was it necessary that every one employ the same means.’
It emerged after the First World War that word of a possible assassination attempt against the Archduke had leaked out in June and reached the Serbian government. It reacted immediately, sending orders for border guards to be on the lookout for young Bosnians trying to smuggle themselves into Bosnia. But by the time the order was given, it was too late. Princip, Grabež and Čabrinović were already on their way to Sarajevo, and with them they had all the gear they needed for their grand gesture: five Browning pistols, six grenades and a plan to take cyanide after the deed was done, so that they would not be taken alive.
They left Belgrade at the end of May 1914 on a river boat that took them all the way to Šabac, back then a busy port on the Sava River. They overnighted at one of the town’s cheap hotels, paid for from a cash float of 150 crowns provided by Ciganović, stuffing their assassins’ kit in a stove for safekeeping. The next day they were helped by Ciganović’s contacts to take a train further west to the spa town of Koviljača, which lies on the Serbian side of the Drina River frontier. Crossing the border was the most risky part of the journey and tensions were rising among the group. While in Koviljača they made a point of sending postcards to friends and relatives as a device to conceal their true intentions, with Princip writing a message to a cousin back in Belgrade that suggested he was on the way to a monastery to study. The quiet young man who had inscribed one of his books with the quote about the importance of keeping secrets grew increasingly tetchy with Čabrinović, whom he accused of risking the mission by talking loosely and bragging about becoming a hero in the postcards he sent.
Tensions got so bad among the three young men that Princip insisted the party split up. He would continue with Grabež, but Čabrinović was told to go on alone. They did not trust him with any of the grenades, giving him just one Browning pistol and telling him to make his own way over to Tuzla on the other side of the frontier, where they agreed a rendezvous. Shortly after they split up Čabrinović got into a panic and abandoned his gun, crossing into Bosnia without incident at the main border post in Zvornik and heading to Tuzla.
Meanwhile, Princip and Grabež double backed on their trail, heading a few miles north towards a reach of the Drina River well known to smugglers. It was a stretch where the river meanders shallow and slow through a series of eyots named after the largest island, Isakovica. On one of the islands was an illegal drinking den, a shebeen where Serbian-made plum brandy was sold cheaply to Bosnian peasants, who could reach the spot across a shallow ford. At the bar they met the first in a series of couriers, who led the pair splashing across the ford into Bosnia and on foot all the way to Tuzla, with the grenades strapped to their bodies, the four remaining pistols heavy in their pockets as they struggled through muddy fields and over forested hills.
Just as for the surviv
ors from Srebrenica who would cross this same terrain on foot eight decades later, the going was hard for Princip and Grabež. At one point they asked for their load to be carried on a peasant’s cart, all the time warning their helpers that they must do everything possible to avoid the Austro-Hungarian border guards and gendarmes. The trial following the assassination heard that although Princip was the smaller of the two men, he was the most threatening, ordering all the couriers they had contact with to keep silent and warning them that they would be hunted down and killed if their mission was revealed. ‘If you betray it, you and your family will be destroyed,’ one of his guides remembered being told by Princip.
So filthy were they from their hike that, as they finally approached Tuzla, the pair stopped to wash the mud off their clothes in a stream, worried that it would raise suspicion once they entered the town. In 1995 I watched women driven out of Srebrenica also wash their filthy clothes in rivers near Tuzla. By the time Princip reached the city his trousers were so tatty that he bought himself a new pair, and he was soon recognised by locals who knew him from his time studying briefly in the town in 1910. They remarked that the timid, bookish boy had grown into a rather fearsome-looking young man with long hair and a very determined manner. After meeting up again with Čabrinović, the group decided it was too dangerous to carry the weapons any further, leaving them with a local man they trusted. He was told that the person who would come to collect the cache would identify himself in code by ostentatiously showing him a packet of Stefanija cigarettes. The three then set off for Sarajevo by train, sitting in the same carriage, but apart from each other so as not to arouse suspicion. Čabrinović, whose garrulousness had so worried his co-conspirators, started a conversation with a policeman who happened to be travelling on the same train and knew his father back in Sarajevo. The subject of the imminent imperial tour of Bosnia came up, and when Čabrinović asked when the Archduke was due to visit Sarajevo, the policeman told him the exact date: Sunday 28 June.