Ultimatums, Empires, and the Echoes of War
On a sunlit morning in Sarajevo, June 28, 1914, a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip stepped from a crowd and fired two shots that would fracture the world. His bullets struck down Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife, Sophie, igniting a chain reaction that would engulf continents. The assassination was not merely a murder—it was a match tossed into a powder keg of alliances, grievances, and imperial ambitions.