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Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914

Page 22

by Frederic Morton


  ***

  And reunite they did at the Bosnian capital on June 4, with Cabrinovic arriving, obediently, by a different path. Princip had chastised him into prudence, at least for a while. But at Sarajevo Princip met trouble from another source. It was also unexpected: Ilia.

  Ilia, the fourth of the quartet of conspirators, had been among Princip's earliest companions in the cause, while Princip had lived in Sarajevo. Ilic had remained there with the Black Hand's knowledge and encouragement. His job: to scout security measures taken in the city, along with other details of the Archduke's coming. Ilk had served as the Sarajevo pillar of the developing plot. Princip found the pillar turning into putty.

  Ilic's first words were that he had recruited three more youths "as auxiliaries" in the planned assassination.

  "You've tripled the chances of betrayal!" Princip said.

  Ilic protested. These three, he said, were all proven idealists. In fact, they would be valuable as part of the core of a new party that might be formed and whose formation might perhaps be a better tactic than the planned action-

  Better than the action against the Archduke? Princip couldn't believe his ears.

  Well, he had been thinking about it, Ilia said. Better in the sense that-that killing the Archduke at this point might perhaps turn people against the Black Hand, but perhaps if a political party were started first, why, it would give the cause a more legitimate base, make it more widely popular, and then, perhaps, there would be very strong popular support for a radical act later, so that's why he, Ilia, had founded a legal political weekly just three weeks ago, it was called Zvono ("The Bell") and it would help create a more revolutionary climate with the ideas of Friedrich Engels, Bakunin, Trotsky buttressing the Serb cause-

  "No," Princip said.

  The anxiety that had spilled crudely out of Cabrinovic was now pouring, more intellectualized, out of Ilia. Nothing but anxiety lay behind all this stuttering.

  Princip's small hand came down hard on Ilic's shoulder. No, he told Ilia. There was no "perhaps." There was no "better tactic." There was only the deed it was their duty to do. They had not come together in Sarajevo as Socialists or journalists or intellectual politicians. They were warriors for Serb freedom. They had sworn to act. Now they must prepare to perform the action.

  Princip's words did not cure Ilia of dread. But Princip's unblinking blue eyes and unrelenting low voice subdued Ilk's resistance. For the next three weeks Ilia kept nursing his misgivings obliquely in the pages of Zvono. In the June 15 issue he discussed "Seven Who Were Hanged," a story by the Russian writer Leonid Andreyev, praising it as "a significant contribution to the argument against capital punishment." Ilia printed Andreyev's own comment that"… it is my intention with this tale to point out the horror and impermissibility of capital punishment. The death penalty confuses the conscience of even resolute men…"

  But even as Ilic's essay impugned capital punishment, he himself helped Princip trigger the death sentence to be visited on the Habsburg heir apparent.

  Ilk arranged for Princip's lodging at his mother's house. Ilia retrieved the conspirators' arsenal. Princip, ever vigilant, had avoided the risk of entering Sarajevo armed; the bombs and pistols had been deposited with a "safe" cinema proprietor in Tuzla, a town close to Sarajevo. Ilk, who knew the pattern of local police surveillance, brought the weapons into the city. On the day he published his brief against capital punishment, Ilia obediently placed the instruments of execution under Princip's bed.

  Together Princip and Ilia combed Sarajevo newspapers for the Archduke's specific whereabouts during his forthcoming visit. The big Jesuit-controlled daily Hrvatski Dnevnik spoke the loyalist sympathies of Catholic Bosnia (as opposed to the much more Belgrade-minded Greek Orthodox element). Hrvatski Dnevnik looked forward to the Archduke with headlines like HAIL, OUR HOPE! but with no information interesting to people who wanted to get that hope into their gunsights. The German-language Die Bosnische Post was more helpful. In Princip's band only Ilia fully had mastered the oppressors' tongue, and on June 18 he found in Die Bosnische Post the Archduke's exact itinerary through the city. He mapped it out for Princip long before it appeared on posters calling on the populace to line their Crown Prince's path with cheers.

  Every day before the Archduke's arrival, fear and doubt flickered through Ilk. Every day he helped Princip inch closer to the thing he feared and doubted. After a while Princip ran out of the money handed him by the Black Hand in Belgrade. Ilk gave him "a loan" of twenty kronen. When that ran out, Princip ordered Ilia to procure gainful employment for himself and Cabrinovic. Ilk found Princip office work at a welfare society. He got Cabrinovic a job at a printing plant.

  Ilk also acted as navigator, evading police patrols, when the band visited Graben who lived with a girl friend in the village of Pale, 15 miles southeast of Sarajevo. As the band strolled through Pale's remote meadows, Princip would pull out his gun to practice his marksmanship on starlings and finches, then order the others to follow suit.

  In Sarajevo itself, Princip drew on Ilic's expertise in devising a surface of innocuous urban adolescence. Princip was a celibate, nonsmoking, nondrinking, murder-intoxicated teenager. He and his friends spent their evenings as normal youths who chased pleasure through the lovely summer nights. They hung about a wine shop popular with the lads and lasses in the street just renamed for Franz Ferdinand. Princip pretended to flirt with girls. For the first and last time in his life he drank Zilavka.

  Prirrcip had the plot poised, primed, and camouflagedwhen it was threatened once more, again by Ilia. Very early one morning he knocked on Princip's door. The assassination, he breathed, must be postponed-word from the Black Hand in Belgrade, whose emissary he had just met in the nearby town of Bled. Princip said that he, as mission leader, had heard nothing. He demanded proof. Ilia said that written orders were too great a risk, but here was printed evidence of the reason behind the decision-and waved a Bosnian newspaper with reports of turmoil in Serbia between militants of the Black Hand stripe and supporters of the more moderate Prime Minister. Princip read the reports. He dropped the paper and said, "All the more reason to go forward with the plot." The plot went forward.

  Two days later Ilia waved newspapers with the bulletin that King Petar of Serbia had retired from active rule; his son Alexander was the Prince Regent. This, Ilia said, might change everything, including their business in Sarajevo. Princip answered that no order about any change had reached him; pistol practice as usual in Grabez's meadow.

  These words he said aloud. Silently he determined that when the time came, Ilk should not be entrusted with a weapon.

  The time came. On the late afternoon of June 27, that rainy day before the Archduke's visit, the bombs and pistols were distributed to all conspirators except Ilia. Princip instructed his team to hide the arms. They were to fool and josh the evening away at the usual wine shop-after all, it was Saturday night. But before sleep they were to spend some minutesalways singly, one by one, never together-at the grave of a Black Hand martyr in Kosovo Cemetery. Here they were to meditate; to dedicate and to consecrate themselves for the grim service they would render to Serbia tomorrow.

  And at the Kosovo Cemetery they all did just that-one by one, in the misty late-night hours of June 27, 1914.

  27

  At 8:15 the next morning, while the archduke and his wife prepared to entrain for Sarajevo, Princip summoned his band for the last time. They met in the back room of the Vlajnic Pastry Shop, near the scene of the day's action. Suddenly it was Cabrinovic-not Ilia-who created a last-minute difficulty.

  Since his return to Sarajevo, Cabrinovic had lived in his parents' house, telling them he'd come home to leave behind his life as a hobo radical. He'd behaved himself accordingly, working in his father's cafe, acting "nicely"-until now; until the imminence of the climax became too much. That morning the elder Cabrinovic decided to hoist the Imperial colors from his establishment. He was a Habsburg loyalist and wished to show respect for the
Crown Prince. Suddenly his son broke into protests against "the odious flag." An argument erupted. The father told the boy to leave the house if he didn't like its banner. The boy stalked off, shouting that soon the Austrian Crown Prince would be a joke-the Serbian King would rule Bosnia!

  When Cabrinovic joined the other confederates in the pastry shop, he was still shaking with an anger all the angrier for its admixture of fear. He came into the back room spouting about his father. Princip restricted him to a whisper. Hissing furiously, Cabrinovic not only reported his fight at home but announced yet another indiscretion. He would have himself photographed right now; if he should die for Serbia this morning, at least a picture of him would survive-the world would have a photograph of him just before his sacrifice-a memento for his father!

  Princip remained calm. One must be calm at the brink. Coming down hard on Cabrinovic now would only have upset the fellow still more. The thing to do was to factor Cabrinovic's instability into his, Princip's, final dispositions.

  He told Cabrinovic to post himself at 9 A.M. sharp with the unarmed Ilia and the three armed auxiliaries near the corner of Cumunja Bridge and Appel Quay. Princip's own station as well as Grabez's would be some three hundred yards farther down the Archduke's route along Appel Quay, closer to City Hall.

  With this deployment, the unreliables (Cabrinovic, Ilic, the auxiliaries) would be tested first because they would see the target first. If they failed, the serious core of the squad, namely Princip backed by Grabei, could still bring the enterprise to the desired end.

  Still calm, Princip dismissed his group. They bade each other farewell since they might never see each other alive again. Princip told them to leave the pastry shop one by one and to arrive at their respective posts a few minutes apart along different paths. Cabrinovic was allowed to go to a photographer's studio on condition that he appear at the exact spot at the exact time, as ordered.

  Cabrinovic swore to his leader that he would. During that brief huddle in the back room, Princip had managed to invest Cabrinovic with some of his own self-control. Cabrinovic proved that a few minutes later in the street. He stumbled on an old crony (with whom he presently had his picture taken), and then on two girls of their acquaintance. Crony and girls wore their Sunday clothes; they were on the town for the gala morning that featured an Archduke's visit. Crony and girls joked with Cabrinovic. None of them noticed anything amiss.

  Neither did Maxim Svara, son of the Attorney General of Sarajevo and a former schoolmate of Princip's. Princip happened to run into him on the way to what no one must know was his battle station. Princip casually small-talked with Maxim, pistol and bomb arranged so as not to bulge his jacket even slightly. For six blocks they strolled together on Appel Quay. All along they watched flags being run up on poles and people assembling to watch the Habsburg prince ride by. Then the two youths wished each other good day. Maxim turned left to the Cathedral where the bishop was offering High Mass in honor of the dynasty. Princip continued walking along the Quay until he reached Latin Bridge.

  From 9 A.M. on he stood there. He waited in the gathering crowd. His ear was cocked for the motorcade. His hand was ready for the trigger of his pistol, for the cap of his bomb, for his capsule of cyanide.

  Just after 10 A.M. he heard cries of "Zivio!.. Zivio!.." followed by a powerful growl of car engines and then, suddenly, a detonation. The bang faded into shouts. At once Prin cip pressed forward fiercely through the throng and saw, at last, the bomb-smashed wooden shutter of a store front with the Habsburg flag waving above, a big car with gesticulating generals and blown-out tires, some people sitting on the curb bloodying their Sunday best-and Cabrinovic held in a rough grip by two gendarmes… Cabrinovic retching from the cyanide, dripping from the river across which he'd obviously tried to escape. No sign of the Archduke, but Princip assumed his body had been spirited away.

  So Cabrinovic, the unstable, had come through after all. Yet obviously he had been prevented from swallowing the cyanide and might not be able to remain silent under tough interrogation. He would give away the Black Hand. Princip's fingers tightened around the Browning. He must kill first Cabrinovic, then himself. That moment a whole new stampede of gendarmes came down on Cabrinovic with their gold-crested helmets and whisked him off. Princip heard the sputter of car engines being cranked up. The motorcade sped off much faster than it had come. And everywhere people who had been closer to the lead car were saying how calm the Archduke had acted, how crazy these fanatics must be with their bombs, how lucky the Archduke had not been hurt.

  The Archduke had not been hurt.

  It had all been for nothing-at least so far. Desperately Princip looked for his confederates in order to regroup. But they were hard to find in the excitement everywhere and the rapid influx of new spectators. The bomb had made the high visit dramatic. Now the Archduke was much more than an interesting sight. He had become a sensation. Very soon this sensation was due to drive back from City Hall, again along Appel Quay. More and more people brimmed on the sidewalk. Nobody of Princip's team was among them, no matter where he looked. They had all fled. They had scattered. They had deserted. Princip was alone. Alone with his bomb, his pistol, and the knowledge of how unlikely he was to use either because of the precautions the enemy would now take.

  But, having driven himself so far without mercy, he decided to go on without much hope. He crossed over to the other side of the Quay. That way he would be closer to the automobiles, just in case the Archduke really did return along Appel Quay, as called for by the original schedule. Once more, he waited, this time at the corner of the quay and a side street. He heard the church clocks strike 10:30 A.M., tolling all is over, all is over, into his ears. He heard the motorcade return at 10:32, and all would have been over indeed-the very spot on which Princip stood would not be memorialized today by two footprints sunk in concrete, the house at his back would not have become a museum enshrining Princip's heroism, the bridge to his left would not now be named Princip Bridge-if…

  If two mistakes had not been made by the entourage of the Austrian Crown Prince. The first was nearly logical. Since Cabrinovic had thrown the bomb from the river side of the quay, an officer of the escort stood on the running board on the same side-not on Princip's side-to protect the Archduke with his body. The second mistake was as mysterious as fate itself. The chauffeur of the lead car, filled with police, had been clearly instructed on what route to take to the garrison hospital where the Archduke wished to visit his wounded aide. Nonetheless the chauffeur made the wrong turn on Appel Quay into the side street off Latin Bridge.

  This mistake did not escape General Potiorek, who sat in the front seat of the second car, that of the Archduke. The General cupped his hands to shout to the first car, "Turn back! Back to the Quay!" The chauffeur obeyed. To obey he must make a U-turn. To make a U-turn in the narrower side street he must come to a halt. Since he came to a halt, so must the drivers of the motorcade behind him. An inevitability decreed that the second car must stop at the corner, directly in front of a thin, small youth who was reaching inside his coat.

  The many days Princip had spent on target practice, the weeks of training and rehearsal, the months of waiting, planning, of steeling himself and disciplining his crew, of patience, cunning, and perseverance-they all converged on this one moment, at 10:34 A.M., on this sunlit corner of the Appel Quay and Rudolf Street, in front of the Schiller Delicatessen Store.

  The chauffeur had just begun to work the wheel for the U-turn. Count Harrach of the Archduke's escort stood on the running board, on the river side of the quay. There was nothing between Franz Ferdinand von Habsburg and Gavrilo Princip except five feet of translucent summer air. For this one moment the pale blue eyes of the son of a postman looked into the pale blue eyes of a lord descended from thirteen European dynasties. The next second the son of the postman realized he could not throw the bomb he was already gripping inside his coat: the Archduke was too close and the crowd too dense around him for hauling out his a
rm. Therefore he pulled out his Browning. He turned his head away (later he would say he had been confounded by the sight of the Duchess, a woman) and, perhaps to compensate for this lapse, pressed the trigger twice.

  And then all was really over. After the two bangs Princip saw the car pull away fast, the Archduke still sitting upright, unaffected, unscathed, even after this final effort.

  Princip put the pistol to his own head, but someone wrested it from his hand. He reached for the cyanide capsule, managed to get it between his teeth, bit it open, already felt a taste of bitter almonds, but a policeman's stick came down on his head and knocked the thing out of his mouth. From everywhere arms reached for him, gripped him and punished him, yet nothing punished him more in this nightmare tumult than the fact that he was still alive and so was the Archduke.

  General Potiorek, the Military Governor of Bosnia, was under that same impression, but only for about five more seconds. After the explosions he looked back instantly at the august pair; the two sat erect and unruffled. But just as the car turned back onto the Quay, the Duchess began leaning oddly against the Archduke. The Archduke's mouth began to dribble red. Count Harrach on the running board, appalled, fumbled for his handkerchief and leaned over to wipe the blood from the Archduke's lips. The Duchess, leaning, cried at her husband, "For heaven's sake, what has happened to you?" The Archduke, who usually roared at any irritation, sat stiffly and silently as he bled. The General shouted at the driver to proceed at top speed to his residence. The Archduchess's head had drooped onto her husband's knees. Blood from the wound in her abdomen soaked through her white silk dress and stained the red and white bouquet of roses clenched in her hand. The Archduke, still sitting stiffly, whispered with his blood-filled mouth: "Sopherl, Sopherl, stirb nicht!.. Bleib am Leben fur unsere Kinder!" ("Little Sophie, little Sophie, don't die!.. Stay alive for our children!") Then he, too, began to droop forward. Count Harrach tried to hold him up as the car hurtled and veered. He asked, "Is Your Highness in great pain?" The Archduke's head had slumped down onto the head of his wife resting on his knees. "It's nothing," he said, quite clearly even above the car engine's roar. "It's nothing," he said again. He kept saying it, more softly, seven more times, the last time just before the car stopped at the Governor's residence. When the two were lifted out of the automobile, her blood had mingled with his on the leather seat.

 

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