July Crisis reason for armed conflict, the dispute between Serbia and Austria-Hungary over the murdered heir, had already become a sidenote to a general European war. Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Sarajevo was the provincial capital. Oskar Potiorek was the military commander and governor of the province. Emperor Franz Joseph ordered Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, to attend military exercises due to be held in Bosnia. After the exercises, on 28 June 1914, Ferdinand toured Sarajevo with his wife, Sophie. Six armed irredentists, five Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim, coordinated by Danilo Ilić, lay in
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria employed a staff of sixteen. His authority was reinforced in 1907 when he secured the retirement of the Emperor's confidant Friedrich von Beck-Rzikowsky as Chief of the General Staff. Beck's successor, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, was personally selected by Franz Ferdinard. Franz in 1913, as heir-presumptive to the elderly emperor, had been appointed inspector general of all the armed forces of Austria-Hungary ("Generalinspektor der gesamten bewaffneten Macht"), a position superior to that previously held by Archduke Albrecht and including presumed command in wartime. In 1894 Franz Ferdinand met Countess Sophie Chotek, a lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella, wife of Archduke Friedrich,