Gavrilo Princip
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gavrilo Princip (25 July 1894 – 28 April 1918) was the Serb man who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the wife of the Archduke, Countess Sophie. These deaths were a cause of the First World War (World War I).
Princip was poor as a child. As a young man he joined a small group who wanted the Slavs in the south of Austria-Hungary to join with Serbia in a new country. They called themselves "Young Bosnia". A group of powerful people in Serbia decided to help them. Those powerful people were called the Black Hand. They gave 'Young Bosnia' guns and small bombs.
When they heard that Franz Ferdinand was coming to Sarajevo, six of them took the bombs and guns and waited for Ferdinand to drive past. They were going to kill Ferdinand when he drove past. Every one of them failed. Gavrilo Princip went to a cafe to drink a cup of coffee.
When Princip came out of the cafe he saw in front of him Ferdinand in his car. The driver of the car had driven his car the wrong way. They couldn't decide which way to go. No one saw Princip. He walked up and shot Ferdinand. He wanted to shoot the general who was also sitting in the car, but Ferdinand's wife Sophie threw her arms around Ferdinand. She was in the way, and Princip shot her instead of the general.
At his trial, Princip said he did it because he loved his people. The Austrians thought it was a very bad crime, but they couldn't kill him because he was only 19 years old. The law in Austria-Hungary said only people older than 21 could be killed, even when the crime was as bad as killing royalty like Ferdinand. They said Princip must stay in prison for 20 years. They put him in a very bad prison. The prison was so bad that he became ill and he died in 1918.
Because this crime (the shooting of the archduke) happened, Austria-Hungary gave Serbia a list of things that Serbia had to do, called an "ultimatum", to stop things like this from happening any more. But it was just about impossible for Serbia to do all the things on the list fast enough, because the Austrians really wanted war with Serbia. Their German allies also wanted a big war. Pretty soon, all of Europe was fighting, and the whole excuse for it was what Princip did at Sarajevo.
