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happened to you?’ 3
    And yet, no sooner has she said that than she too reels, bleeding from a terrible wound in her abdomen. Now she collapses onto the floor of the car, with her face between the Archduke’s knees.
    The Archduke gurgles to his beloved, stricken wife, ‘ Sopherl, Sopherl! Sterbe nicht! Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder! – Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!’ 4
    The bodyguard gathers himself, seizes the Archduke by the collar of his uniform to stop his head dropping forward and asks him whether he is in great pain. Franz Ferdinand answers quietly but quite distinctly, ‘ Es ist nichts . – It’s nothing.’ A pause, and then he repeats the phrase six more times – ‘ Es ist nichts … It’s nothing … It’s nothing … It’s nothing … It’s … nothing … It’s … … nothing … ’ – ever more weakly, as his face begins to contort. It is almost as if he is really trying to convince himself that repeating it would make it so, but it is not to be …
    Because only a few moments after he stops saying it, there is a violent choking sound caused by the bleeding. Both he and his wife die shortly afterwards.
    Things soon take on a momentum all their own. For it is the strong view of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand cannot go unavenged, and at 6 pm on 23 July it gives Serbia a list of ten severe demands that must be agreed to within 48 hours, or else war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is well aware that Serbian Army officers formed the Black Hand. Together with the National Defence Society, formed by Serbian Government members, it aims to bite off the Serbian pieces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Sachertorte. The assassination provides the Empire with the opportunity to stop them once and for all.
    Afraid of the consequences of invasion by a much superior force, the Serbian Government agrees to almost all of the Empire’s ultimatums. However, Serbia insists that it cannot agree to the demands regarding the limitation of freedom of speech or freedom of the press, nor can it allow Austro-Hungarian agents to participate in the investigation of the assassination. ‘Part of your demands we have accepted,’ Serbian Prime Minister Nikola PaÅ¡ić explains in a note to the Austrian Ambassador Baron Vladimir von Giesl. ‘For the rest, we place our hopes on your loyalty and chivalry as an Austrian general.’ 5
    Austria’s reply is not long in coming.
    At 11 am on 28 July 1914, Austria declares war on Serbia. That very evening, three of her warships sail down the Danube and fire salvo after salvo of shells into Serbian fortifications at the Zemun-Belgrade railway bridge, just three miles north of Belgrade. So the Serbs wish to fire bullets at an Austrian Archduke? Then Austria will fire shells onto the capital of the Serbs!
    It is, of course, a catalyst for cataclysm, the one move that makes Europe’s two armed camps of complex alliances take up their arms, put on their marching boots and start to move against each other. For with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, can Russia stand by and see the Serbs, blood of its Slavic blood – its military and spiritual ally – under such outrageous attack?
    It cannot.
    On 30 July, Tsar Nicholas II orders mobilisation of troops on the Russo-Austrian front, deploying four armies against the Austro-Hungarian frontier, with a total of 700,000 Russian soldiers now on the move …
    Can Germany stand by and see Russia march on the flesh of its flesh, its greatest ally to beat them all, Austria-Hungary?
    It cannot. And it, too, now mobilises.
    Britain, of course, watches such events closely, and none more so than the First Lord of the Admiralty – the politician in charge of the British Navy – Winston Churchill.
    Yes, yes, yes, the prospect of war is nominally