Ten Minutes Past Ten: The Morning Sarajevo Changed History
A bomb bounces off a folded car roof, a cyanide pill fails to kill, and a wrong turn puts an archduke within arm's reach of a nineteen-year-old with a pistol. All of it happens before lunch.
At 1:15 in the morning of 28 June 1914, the machinery of an assassination was already set in motion, though the city of Sarajevo still slept. By dawn, Danilo Ilić was walking the length of the planned motorcade route, positioning his six young conspirators along the streets and quietly trying to steady their nerve. Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović, Trifko Grabež and Gavrilo Princip — five Bosnian Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim, all Austro-Hungarian citizens, none older than twenty except Mehmedbašić — took their places, each armed with a bomb, a pistol, or both, supplied and trained by Major Vojislav Tankosić of Serbia's Black Hand network.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, arrived that morning by train from the Ilidža spa outside the city. Governor Oskar Potiorek met them at the Sarajevo station, where six open automobiles waited. A mistake in the boarding order left the special security officers who should have ridden with the Archduke stranded behind; instead, three local policemen crowded into the first car. Franz Ferdinand, Sophie, Potiorek and Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach climbed into the third vehicle, a Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS tourer with its top folded down.
The published itinerary was no secret: a brief inspection of the military barracks, then a drive along the Appel Quay to the town hall, departing the barracks at ten o'clock. Sarajevo's police force numbered only sixty on duty that Sunday, and General Michael von Appel's suggestion that troops line the route had been rejected for fear of unsettling loyal citizens. The motorcade rolled out largely unguarded.
The convoy passed Mehmedbašić first, stationed by Ilić outside the Mostar Cafe with a bomb in hand. He froze and did nothing. Next came Čubrilović, armed with a pistol and a bomb, positioned beside him — he too let the cars pass. Further along the route, near the Miljacka River, waited Čabrinović.
At 10:10, as Franz Ferdinand's car drew level, Čabrinović hurled his bomb. It struck the folded-back roof of the car and bounced into the street before detonating beneath the following vehicle, gouging a hole about a foot wide and six and a half inches deep, wounding sixteen to twenty bystanders, and bringing that car to a halt.
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