The Trigger (30 page)

He sits at one end of the bench, still determined not to look into the camera, and at the other end is Trifko Grabež, his old schoolmate from the High Gymnasium in Sarajevo. They had studied in the same class together, as was shown by the school report I found in Sarajevo, and had both left at the same time. In between them sits a man called Djuro Šarac, another Bosnian Serb, a few years older, who had also come to Belgrade after dropping out of the Austro-Hungarian schooling system. He is more solid, his moustache bushy. He had been accepted into the military units fighting in the First Balkan War and had proved himself in combat. The two young men on either side of him have the air of acolytes looking up to a commanding figure of authority in their midst.

When I visited the park it was laid out around a statue of Vojvoda Vuk that would not have been there when the photograph was taken. The fighter died in 1916 and the full-size statue shows him in a muscular pose, rifle in one hand, cloak across his shoulders, his left arm raised as he points purposefully onwards in battle. It is a design rich in the iconography of the Serbian epic hero, with a skull and crossbones carved prominently into the large stone pedestal on which the statue sits.

As I continued to explore Princip’s trail in Belgrade, I was struck by the many streams of nationalist influence that he would have encountered during his time scrabbling to survive as a student in the city. Serbian nationalists cherish an old icon dating from Byzantium, a Serbian cross with the Cyrillic letter S arranged four times symmetrically around it, a symbol that has come to stand for ‘samo sloga Srbina spasava’ or ‘only unity saves the Serbs’. Yet such unity was as much a chimera in Princip’s day as in more recent times. With Serbia involved in combat against the Ottomans in the brief First Balkan War of 1912 and the even shorter Second Balkan War of 1913 against Bulgaria, the most obvious stream of political opinion was the one that emphasised the interests of Serbia, and Serbia alone. This was the first south-Slav nation to have won independence and, as a Bosnian Serb, Princip would have been drawn quite naturally towards it.

But what became clear from my research was that Princip was not predominantly committed to Serb nationalism. His greater goal was freeing all south Slavs, not just ethnic Serbs like himself. Princip supported what became known as the Yugoslav ideal of driving the Austro-Hungarians back not just from Bosnia, but also from the areas to the north where other south Slavs – the Croats and the Slovenes – were under the same occupation. His goal was liberation for all south Slavs. The Serbs might have made the initial break, but out of Yugoslav solidarity they must act as the catalyst to free their south-Slav brothers and sisters – the kernel around which a wider south-Slav nation would ultimately grow, a nation that might be called Yugoslavia. ‘Yug’ is the anglicisation of the local word for south, jug.

Early indications of Princip’s wider commitment beyond pure Serb nationalism can be seen in a letter he wrote in 1912, which revealed the fault lines that had already developed within political opinion. It referred to how, as a supporter of south-Slav nationalism, he had been attacked while still at school in Sarajevo by those Serb students who were only interested in their own kind. He wrote of how, for voicing his wider south-Slav commitment, he was insulted ‘with the worst expressions, objecting that we were not Serbs. This caused a deep breach and hatred between us.’ Princip continued to associate with Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats right up to the assassination of 1914; indeed, a key introduction was made in Belgrade, when the decision was taken to procure weapons, by a man called Djulaga Bukovac, one of the many Bosnian Muslim radicals then active in the city.

At his trial and during the police investigation Princip consistently said that, even though he was an ethnic Serb, his commitment was to freeing all south Slavs. ‘I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free from Austria,’ he told the courtroom. ‘The plan was to unite all south Slavs. It was understood that Serbia as the free part of the south Slavs had the moral duty to help in the unification, to be to the south Slavs as the Piedmont was to Italy.’ When later asked about how south Slavs should regard the Habsburg Empire, he replied: ‘In my opinion every Serb, Croat and Slovene should be an enemy of Austria.’ Later in his prison cell he clung to the same goal, sharing his thoughts with Dr Pappenheim. ‘The ideal of the young people was the unity of the south-Slav peoples, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, but not under Austria. In a kind of state, republic or something of that sort,’ the doctor recorded in his notes.

Princip can be accused of being unrealistic, of being utopian, of not thinking through how the ideal of south-Slav unity might be realised, or how the rights of the large community of fellow south Slavs who had converted to Islam could be protected. But he cannot be accused of acting out of an interest in purely Serb nationalism. In the early years of the twentieth century he was not alone, for all over the Balkans – from Slovenia in the north, through Zagreb and Sarajevo, all the way south through Belgrade – there existed a significant body of opinion that all south Slavs should live as one after ridding themselves of the foreign occupier. With a hundred years of hindsight (not least the fighting of the 1990s that destroyed Yugoslavia), it is fair to say that the south Slav or Yugoslav ideal proved to be a failure. But Princip’s commitment to it should not be ignored, and the mistake should not be made of saying that he was nothing but a Serb nationalist. The difference might appear arcane, but to my eye – as someone proud to come from the United Kingdom – it feels like the difference between being willing to fight for Britain and the reductionism of being a nationalist interested solely in one of its component parts, whether England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

As I explored Belgrade, a city that commemorates its national heroes so proudly, it was clear that Princip’s Yugoslav views represented something of a conundrum. I would often see walls daubed with nationalist graffiti that referred to key dates in Serbian history, from the Middle Ages to the 1990s. There was never any mention of Princip. Hawkers in Kalemegdan Park sold self-published books that promised the ‘truth about Srebrenica’, denying that any war crimes were ever committed by the Serbian side; and hagiographies of Bosnian Serb leaders such as Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, rightly regarded by most objective observers as war criminals. There were no books about Princip, his commitment to the Serbian cause not being pure enough to be worthy of recognition. He was the ethnic Serb who had had greater impact on world history than any other and yet, with the exception of the signs marking Gavrilo Princip Street, I saw no statues, no plaques and very little interest when I trawled the archives. When I went to the Serb National Archive the young receptionist barely looked up from the comic he was reading, while listening to the Rolling Stones playing through some speakers on his desk. ‘We have nothing on Princip,’ he said before going back to his comic. ‘Maybe you should try the Yugoslav Archive.’

One sunny afternoon I took tea with Ljubodrag Dimić, a professor of history from Belgrade University, and asked him why Princip is not proudly commemorated within the Serbian pantheon. ‘The thing you must remember is that the Mlada Bosna movement that Princip belonged to is not typical of other nationalist movements of the Balkans,’ he said. ‘It was not purely a Serbian model of nationalism, more a romantic, inclusive model along the lines of Germany or France – one that sought to create something that had not been there before, one that brought together, in the case of Germany, Germans of all faiths, Catholic or Protestant. Mlada Bosna supported what you might call a south-Slav myth, one that presented a new, inclusive model for life, a style of living, of music, of poetry that was different from the individual nationalist models of the Serbs or the Croats, say. It was mythical, and although it was clear Princip was a hero who gave his life for the future of Yugoslavia, as that myth became manipulated, so his story became manipulated. When the interest died for Yugoslavia, so did the interest in Princip.’

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On one level the plot to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and second only in imperial rank to his uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, was relatively straightforward. At a time when assassination was a common driver for political change across the Balkans, Princip and his associates from Mlada Bosna had discussed for some time how they might emulate the example of their hero, Bogdan Žerajić, by killing a senior figure from within the occupying power. Princip told Dr Pappenheim that in 1913 the figure they initially planned to go after was General Oskar Potiorek, the authoritarian colonial governor of Bosnia. But in the spring of 1914 a much more tempting target presented itself, when Princip was shown at one of Belgrade’s downmarket cafés a newspaper cutting that had been sent anonymously to a Bosnian friend, Nedeljko Čabrinović.

The cutting announced that in late June Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be making an official visit to Bosnia in his formal capacity as inspector general of Austria–Hungary’s armed forces. Čabrinović later described how he spotted Princip dancing a traditional Serbian dance at the Acorn Wreath café, before showing him the piece of newsprint. ‘I attached no importance to that communication … I did not think it would play such a significant role in my life,’ he said.

For Princip this was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He would lead a group of assassins back across the Drina in time to launch an attack on the Archduke during his official visit to Sarajevo. It would be his grand gesture – one that would strike back against the outsider in the name of all south Slavs under occupation and prove once and for all that he was no weakling. The young idealist hoped the killing would inspire a swell of south-Slav feeling that would one day drive out the occupier, although quite how this would eventually be achieved was not of much importance to him. Striking back at the occupier was what counted most. All the evidence showed that Princip was the driving force behind the subsequent plot, persuading Čabrinović to join him, along with his old schoolmate and the young man he was photographed with in the park, Trifko Grabež. Over the next weeks the three of them met repeatedly around Green Wreath Square to plot, sworn to secrecy and constantly vigilant against spies who might betray them either to the Austro-Hungarians or to a Serbian government anxious not to provoke its imperial neighbour.

To acquire weapons the penniless group of plotters trusted a Bosnian Muslim, Djulaga Bukovac, who had trained with the Serbian guerrillas fighting in the Balkan Wars, to make a discreet approach to a man called Milan Ciganović, another veteran and one who was known to be well connected within Serbian paramilitary groups. After some discussions, most of which took place in and around Green Wreath Square, Ciganović said he was willing to provide some grenades, but Princip said this would not be enough. Grenades were not the most reliable tool for an assassination because of the variable time-lapse between priming the weapon and its detonation. He demanded pistols as well.

After referring back to his own contacts, Ciganović agreed to also supply pistols and ammunition, leading the would-be assassins on several occasions to an unpopulated forest called Topčider, just beyond the centre of Belgrade, which was then relatively small. There he showed the young Bosnians how to use the grenades: small metal blocks about the same size and shape as a flattened bottle, with a protective cover on the firing cap. Once the cover was unscrewed, the user would break the cap by striking it against something solid, like a rock, to start the detonation process. The user then had a few seconds to throw the grenade before it blew up. The pistols were 9mm Browning semi-automatics, originally a Belgian design and a weapon that was common among soldiers fighting for the Serbian army in the Balkan Wars. The would-be assassins took it in turns to fire at targets nailed to tree trunks in Topčider. Princip showed himself to be the best marksman.

The area where they trained has since been swallowed by the spread of Belgrade, although a small section is retained today as Topčider Park. It takes about an hour to reach the park on foot from the city centre, and as I walked there and explored its shaded footpaths, now the domain of joggers and dog-walkers, I tried to picture the scene in the early summer of 1914 when shots from the young men boomed through these same trees. As I had found out, Princip was motivated by the dream of forging Yugoslavia, a country where all south Slavs could live freely as one, and I smiled wryly at what I found in the park. Tito, the dictator who used communism to keep Yugoslavia together in the decades after the Second World War, lies buried there under a slab of white marble in a mausoleum that is open to visitors. He died in 1980 and, with him, the dream of Yugoslavia. When I joined a tour party processing past his tomb I noticed that an old map of Titoist Yugoslavia had been defaced. Sarajevo had been scratched out.

Ciganović did not just provide the three-man assassination team with weapons. He also gave them the means to smuggle themselves back across the Drina into Bosnia, handing them an envelope containing a note to be given to one of his army friends in the town of Šabac in western Serbia, close to the border with Bosnia.

The role played by Ciganović in helping Princip and his comrades complicates an otherwise straightforward plot. Ciganović was a Freemason, a discovery that led the Austro-Hungarian authorities at the trial following the assassination to suggest that the plot to kill the Archduke might have been hatched by the Freemasons, a theory that has since been discounted. But he was also an associate of the Black Hand, the secretive, ultra-nationalist Serbian group dating back to the start of the twentieth century that had been responsible for the regicide of 1903. The role of the Black Hand in the assassination of 1914 has been the subject of weighty analysis by academics and historians, although very little is undisputed. It is accepted that the weapons provided to the assassins came from the Black Hand with the blessing of its overall leader, Dragutin Dimitrijević, a powerful éminence grise in the Serbian security apparatus in the years running up to the First World War. Better known by his pseudonym, Apis, he was a Serb nationalist hardliner who held senior positions within Serbian military intelligence, an organisation that was used to running agents in and out of Bosnia through a network of couriers and smugglers. It was this network that was made available to Princip and his two colleagues.