Archduke Franz Ferdinand


Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the throne of the Hapsburg Empire in Austria-Hungary. It was his assassination in 1914 that triggered the start of the First World War. The timing of his visit to Serbia was unfortunate, it was Serbia's national day and the anniversary of a humiliating Serbian defeat by the Turks some six hundred years earlier. He was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip.


| Causes of the Great War | Heads of State History | Humanities | Plymouth




by Stephen Luscombe