Day of the Assassins (22 page)

Was HMS
Dreadnought
real?

Launched in 1906, HMS
Dreadnought
was the first British Royal Navy ‘all big gun’ battleship, and she revolutionised battleship design. She was built at Portsmouth in only fourteen months. She was also fast – adopting revolutionary steam-turbine engines which had undergone little testing at the time.
Dreadnought
gave her name to a class of battleships that made warships built before this time virtually obsolete. Germany started to build ‘
Dreadnought
-type’ battleships following Britain’s example, and there ensued a naval race between Britain and Germany, who both spent significant resources trying to out-build each other. At the outbreak of war, Britain had twenty-two
Dreadnought
-type battleships and Germany had fifteen – the later models were even bigger and more powerful than the original. HMS
Dreadnought
herself saw little action in the First World War and was de-commissioned shortly afterwards.

What is a Schwarzgelb?

To be a true supporter of the Austro-Hungarian regime was to be called a ‘Schwarzgelb’ – reflecting the colours of the Habsburgs – black and yellow. It is also a term used to refer to policies in favour of the regime.

What happened to the assassins?

Gavrilo Princip was imprisoned after the assassination. He was technically too young to be executed under law. He died from tuberculosis in April 1918 in a prison hospital. In Serbia, he became a national hero. Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen is now the Princip Museum, and two footprints on the pavement outside mark where Princip stood to fire the shots.

Nedjelko Čabrinović was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He died in January 1916, also of tuberculosis.

Vaso Čubrilović received a sixteen-year prison sentence. Released in 1918 he became Minister of Forests for Yugoslavia.

Trifun Grabež was sentenced to twenty years. He died in February 1916 of tuberculosis.

Mehmed Mehmedbašić was implicated in a new assassination plot. He was imprisoned then pardoned in 1919. He returned to Sarajevo to work as a gardener and carpenter.

Cvijetko Popović received a thirteen-year sentence. He later became curator at the Sarajevo Museum.

Danilo Ilić was arrested by Sarajevo police a few days after the assassination. In the hope of avoiding the death penalty he gave the police the names of everyone involved in the plot. In 1915, he was hanged.

Dragutin Dimitrijević was arrested in 1917 and was sentenced to death for treason. He was executed in 1917.

How did the war end?

World War I came to an end on 11th November 1918 when Germany agreed to a ceasefire and signed the Treaty of Versailles in the following year. This treaty required Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war and to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay reparations to certain allied countries.