Why was Franz Ferdinand assassinated

The 28th of June, 1914 would always be regarded as one of the blackest days in the history of mankind. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on this tragic day. The Archduke and his wife, Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo. This ghastly act was undertaken by Gavrilo Princip, who was merely 19 years old at that time. He, along with five other trained conspirators, was co-ordinated by Danilo Ilić. While the Archduke was trying to leave the city with his wife upon the advice of the Austrian Commander General Potiorek after a bombing attempt failed, his car was intercepted by Princip who fired bullet shots at the couple, thus killing them on the spot. He was arrested by the police from the spot of assassination.

The murder of the Archduke had political backing, and the motive of the assassination was to ravage the Austria-Hungarian south-Slav provinces. The Serbian military officers were behind this attack. The assassins wanted to include these provinces into a state that would later be called Greater Serbia, or Yugoslavia. The Archduke held domination over the Bosnian province, along with Herzegovina. The Serbian military officers wanted a separate Yugoslavia, and the Archduke’s rule over Bosnia was a hindrance to their objectives. The powers conferred on the Archduke by the Treaty of Berlin were a big roadblock in the way of the Young Bosnia movement.

Gavrilo Princip acted for the Black Hand Society that decided upon the Archduke’s assassination when he was touring Sarajevo. Being a believer of triadism and increased federalism, Franz Ferdinand advocated the engendering of a third crown by combining the lands of the Slavic within the Austro-Hungarian empire, thus reorganizing Austria-Hungary.

The Serbian irredentists perceived Franz Ferdinand as a huge threat to their motives as he would have led to the creation of a Slavic kingdom which would not have served the Serbian movement any good. The biggest motivation for Princip to attempt an assassination upon Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to prevent him from accomplishing his planned reforms, as admitted by the assassin in the court.