On June 28, 1914, a very special day for many countries, a 19-year-old boy fired two shots and assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir and his wife who were visiting Sarajevo, resulting in 1.5 billion people involved in the war and 30 million casualties, but why was he not sentenced to death?
Born on July 25, 1894, the young man, Gavrillo Princip, was a Bosnian, Serbian nationalist, who grew up no different from boys of the same age, the only difference being that he assassinated two people and became the 19-year-old who caused the biggest trouble in the world, known in history as the "Sarajevo Incident", which was the trigger for the world's first world war.
Did Princip shoot to cause a world war? Obviously not, in 1908, the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, only 6 years later, a very short time, the local people did not change their hatred for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they always thought about assassination.
The heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not think about the mood of the Bosnians, and he made a visit to Sarajevo in order to give his wife the royal glory she could not get in Vienna, but he did not expect that the two were killed, and what people did not expect was that a long-planned war was about to break out.
The contradictions between the Allied camps of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Allies of Britain and Russia became more and more obvious, and the two gunshots in Sarajevo became the reason for the war, even without Princip's assassination, the great war would still take place on the grounds of other events.
It just so happened that Princip acted at this time, making him a young man known to the whole world, but also a "sinner", in 1977 the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia assassinated the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince standing on a stone slab in Principe, and cast a pair of footprints with cement to commemorate this Serbian youth who "gave his life for national independence and freedom".
Later, the stone slab was demolished, and it was also a twist and turn; in 1995, the president of the United States at that time called Princip a terrorist for the first time, if you ask Princip whether he regretted the assassination, it is estimated that he will think that he is right, but if he asks whether he has thought about triggering a world war, he must be at a loss.
Princip was arrested soon after the assassination and confessed to his crimes, but Princip was under 20 years of age, according to the Austrian Penal Code, Princip could not be sentenced to death, although he was not sentenced to death, his outcome was not necessarily good, he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, was taken to Trecenta in Bohemia, the harsh environment made Princip suffer from tuberculosis, and in April 1918, Princip died of illness.