The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as a Backwards Bicycle Race


 


I'm 54. I'm pretty well, educated, and I've spent most of my life reading.
Which is why, when I come across something like this, there's a twinge of guilt in this.
The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The event that precipitated World War I. I've read quite a bit about the feelings of the Serbians at the time--the unwieldy state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, even the strange morganatic marriage that Ferdinand had with his Czech wife (prevented by the marriage agreement from ever becoming Empress or even sitting in the royal box at the Opera.) I even have the Regis Philbin-impressing detail of knowing the assassin's name (because it has a ring to it): Gavrilo Princip.
But the assassination itself? Princip runs up to the motorcade and shoots, right? No.
When I finally find out the details , my reactions are these:
1)WTF?
2) How could they not have taught this in school?What a story! It'd have everybody on the edge of their seats! What's wrong with these people?
3) No, it's just got to be the case that I say this and everybody looks at me and says, "well of course, doofus. You mean to tell us you didn't know this?"
4) I'm 54. I'm pretty well, educated, and I've spent most of my life reading.....

First, on the way from the train station to City Hall, a man named Nedjelko Cabrinovic throws a bomb at the motorcade, hitting the car behind the Archduke. (He takes cyanide and jumps in the river,but, even though he's already dying of tuberculosis, neither succeed in killing him, and he's arrested .) (All of which makes me think of the aria sung by Mimi in La Bohème, sung as she's dying of tuberculosis, in a new light.)

But after driving at top speed to City Hall, are the troops called out? Do they clear the streets? Do they stay in the Hall? No.

In this, the most rebellious province of the Empire, none of this is done to protect the Heir to the Throne. Nope. The Archduke insists on going to see those wounded in the first attack at the hospital, and wife Sophie insists on coming with. They decide to avoid the city center and drive directly there, along the Appel Quay. However, the driver is (apparently not told this, and takes a right turn at Franz Joseph Street.

Standing at the corner of Franz Josef Street? Gavrilo Princip.

So he leaps out and shoots them as they go by? No.

General Oskar Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the car with the Archduke and his wife, yells at the driver "What are you doing? We're supposed to go via Appel Quay!"

And so the driver backs up--slowly--right back towards Gavrilo Princip, who, this time, steps out and shoots the Archduke and his wife.

Now, everybody who knew this story, raise their hands.

Dammit, even the big fat histories of World War I that I read didn't have this. I swear to Koresh!

And as I'm retelling this, I'm beginning to feel like Jim Garrison in JFK. And I'm being pushed into conspiracy theories because, no, people couldn't really be THAT stupid.

Could they?

Posted: Thursday - January 25, 2007 at 01:44 PM        

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