On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the AustroHungarian Empire, paid a state visit to the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. Although the
Balkans were nominally under imperial control, the trip was fraught with peril.
The city was honeycombed with operatives of the Serbian secret society called
Unification or Death, commonly known as The Black Hand, which sought
independence from the Habsburg monarchy. Indeed, in 1903, operatives of that
society had assassinated the pro-Austrian king of Serbia, Alexander I, replacing
him with the more nationalist Peter I. But it was not enough to install a
sympathetic king. The Habsburgs would have to be convinced to abandon their
ambitions in the Balkans. When the Archduke came to Sarajevo, the Black Hand
saw its opportunity to strike.
The assassination attempt failed, when one of the conspirators threw a grenade into the wrong
automobile in the motorcade. This tipped off the Archduke and his guard, who were on high
alert. But in an incredible sequence of events, one of the conspirators, Gavrilo Princip, stumbled
out of a bar to find Franz Fredinand and his wife directly in front of him—their car had gone
down the wrong street and was in the slow process of turning around. Princip drew his gun, a
Belgian-made Fabrique Nationale model 1910 semi-automatic pistol—and fired two shots from a
distance of about five feet, killing both the Archduke and his wife.
As a result of the assassination, the Habsburg monarchy was indeed overthrown, just as Princip
wanted—but not before the major European powers would fight the worst and most deadly war
the world had ever seen. The Archduke was hardly a sympathetic figure—to his people, or even
to his uncle, the Emperor Franz Josef. But Austro-Hungary used the assassination as a pretext
to an issue an ultimatum to Serbia. When this was rejected by the Serbians, as was expected,
Austro-Hungary declared war.
But the nations of 1914 Europe did not exist in a vacuum. A dizzying array of international
treaties bound the countries together; these so-called “entangled alliances” would accelerate the
spread of war. Russia, which had pledged to come to Serbia’s defense, mobilized its forces to do
just that. Germany, which had allied itself with Austro-Hungary, then declared war on Russia,
and that led France and Great Britain to enter the fray in the service of a tsarist government that
would itself be overthrown three years later. For over three years, the Central Powers of
Germany along with the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires fought the Allied forces of
Great Britain, France, and Russia to a bloody standstill. In 1917, the tsarist government of
Russian fell to the Bolsheviks, and Russia abruptly quit the war. The entry of the United States
into the conflict that same year finally turned the tide, providing the Allies the needed jolt to
defeat Germany.
The war left Great Britain, once the war’s great banker, in deep financial difficulty; France,
embittered and vengeful; Russia, in the hand of the Bolshevik revolutionaries; and Germany
deep in debt, which subsequently they attempted to solve by printing money and causing
terrible hyperinflation. By the end of the war, the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and
Ottoman empires had all collapsed, and some 37 million human beings became casualties.
When the smoke cleared, the appetite for war in Europe had been sated for the foreseeable
future—or so it seemed. No one could have foretold that an even more catastrophic war was
right around the corner.
This box contains a silver denar coin issued by the Kingdom of Serbia that circulated during the
Great War. The portrait is of Peter I, the king installed by the Black Hand after the assassination
of Alexander I in 1903.
Serbia | denar | KM-25
5.000 g, 0.8350 Silver 0.1342 oz. ASW, 22.5 mm
Obverse: Head right
Reverse: Crown above value and date within
wreath
The coin images used are not to scale and are for illustration purpose only.
The grades of the coins in this collection may vary.
All coins in each set are protected in an archival capsule and beautifully displayed in a deluxe
case. The box set is accompanied with a story card, certificate of authenticity, and a black gift
box. Box measures approximately: 3 57/64" x 3 57/64" x 13/8"
Order code: BLACKHANDBOX