Causes of World War I corrective." British Diplomat Arthur Nicolson wrote in May 1914, “Since I have been at the Foreign Office I have not seen such calm waters.” On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead, by two gun shots in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosniak) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The assassination is significant because it was perceived by Austria-Hungary as an existential challenge
Trifko Grabež or a bomb and a small vial of cyanide. They were instructed to commit suicide after Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been killed. It was important to Colonel Dimitrijević that the men did not have the opportunity to confess who had organised the assassination. Grabež, Nedjelko Čabrinović, and Gavrilo Princip, were all suffering from tuberculosis and knew they would not live long and the other four men hated Franz Ferdinand. They were therefore willing to give their life for what they believed was a great cause: Bosnia and Herzegovina achieving independence from Austro-Hungary. Nikola Pašić, the prime minister of Serbia, heard