To my peoples was made plural. After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, diplomatic relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia became strained. After weeks of discussions, government and army leaders of the Empire decided to risk war with Serbia, hoping for a short and victorious campaign. Emperor Franz Joseph signed the declaration of war in his Imperial Villa in Bad Ischl on July 28. The document was distributed all over the empire and was widely published on the morning of the next day. At this time, several
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand advocate of increased federalism and widely believed to favor trialism, under which Austria-Hungary would be reorganized by combining the Slavic lands within the Austro-Hungarian empire into a third crown. A Slavic kingdom could have been a bulwark against Serb irredentism, and Franz Ferdinand was therefore perceived as a threat by those same irredentists. Princip later stated to the court that preventing Franz Ferdinand's planned reforms was one of his motivations. The day of the assassination, June 28 (June 15 in the Julian calendar), is the feast of St. Vitus. In Serbia, it is called Vidovdan and commemorates the 1389 Battle