Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, occurred on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo when they were mortally wounded by Gavrilo Princip. Princip was 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 political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the
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