Gavrilo Princip
Gavrilo Princip (July 25, 1894 (or 1895) – April 28, 1918) was a Bosnian Serb nationalist who killed Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and his wife Countess Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, prompting the Austrian action against Serbia that led to World War I.
Born in Obljaj, Bosansko Grahovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Princip was a member of the Serb group Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), which advocated Bosnia's unification with Serbia.
On June 28, 1914 participated in the assassination in Sarajevo. After Nedeljko Čabrinović's bomb missed the Archduke's car and five other conspirators failed to attack, it was beginning to look like the assassination would fail. However, Franz Ferdinand decided to go to hospital and visit the victims of Čabrinović's bomb. Princip had gone to a nearby shop for a sandwich, apparently giving up, when he spotted Ferdinand's car as it drove past, having taken a wrong turn. After dashing up to the car, Princip shot Sophie in the stomach, and a second shot hit Ferdinand in the neck. They were driven to the governor's residence where they died from their wounds.
Princip tried to kill himself first by ingesting cyanide, and then with his gun, but he vomited the poison (which Čabrinović had also done, leading the police to believe the group had been deceived and sold a much weaker poison), and the gun was wrestled from his hand before he had a chance to fire another shot. Having been too young at the time of the assassination to face the death penalty, Princip received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison, where he was held in harsh conditions worsened by the war. He died of tuberculosis of the bone on April 28, 1918 at Theresienstadt.
The gun used by Princip was a Browning M 1910 semi-automatic pistol in 7.65×17mm (.32 ACP) caliber. It was recently found and recovered in the home of an Austrian Jesuit family, and is now in display at the Vienna Museum of Military History. The second bullet fired by Gavrilo, killing Ferdinand, is stored as a museum exhibit in the Konopiště Castle in the town of Konopiště, Czech Republic.
See also
