It will go little noticed but today marks 106 years since the death of the principal player and hero of World War I, Gavrilo Princip.
Gavrilo’s lasting historical claim to fame, of course, came four years earlier in Sarajevo.
When he shot dead the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia.
And sparked a series of reactions and responses which led to a World War in which 20 million died.
Including two proud brothers of Donegal in the north-west who I was the first of my family to pay tribute to, in Flanders.
Czech out for Princip
Few around the world acknowledged or would have commemorated Princip’s passing today in 1918.
Busy as they would have been in trench, sea or air.
Nineteen at the time, Princip’s age was to save him from the death penalty.
But not the Small Fortress in Terezin in modern-day Czechia where he was sent to serve a 20-year prison sentence.
A long stretch it was all right with the Slav nationalist chained to a wall in his cell.
Royally stuffed
It may have come as a blessed relief to Princip then that he escaped this life seven months before all fighting finished.
In a war he always claimed would have happened anyway without his intervention.
Which, of course, may have been right with Queen Victoria’s descendants, on the thrones of Britain, Germany and Russia hell-bent on empire building.
It is worth remembering too that while the First World War began with the death of two royals more were to be lost across its duration.
The whole Romanov line in Russia and 30 odd others (and they’re all odd).
Back from the dead
Two years after his death, Princip and the other conspirators were exhumed and brought to Sarajevo.
And buried together beneath the Vidovan Heroes Chapel.
The house where Princip lived in Sarajevo became something of a political plaything.
Destroyed an rebuilt three times over the next near 100 years.
While his pistol and Franz Ferdinand’s undershirt reside in the last place Princip would have wanted.
In the Museum of Military History in Vienna.
For everything else Franz Ferdinand related then the Sarajevo Museum is a time capsule.
Princip on a pedestal
But if it’s Princip you want to celebrate then you can visit his bust in Tovarisevo or a statue erected in East Sarajevo on the centenary.
While a 2m-high bronze statue was put up in Serbia capital Belgrade amid much fanfare a year later.
All to the principal player and hero of World War I.
