The Great War: 100 Years Ago

War becomes inevitable as Austro-Hungary issues an ultimatum to Serbia.  Austro-Hungary hoped that it could rapidly defeat Serbia and leave the annexing an accomplish fact before Russia or France with their powerful armies could react.  The ultimatum was so written as to be impossible for Serbia to accept, but Serbia accepted most of it.  Despite this they also mobilized their army, which was seen in the Austro-Hungarian empire as reason to continue their plans to invade.

On the 22nd of July, 2014, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foriegn Affairs, Count Leopold Berchtold, presented what it considered a final ultimatum to the Serbians.

Vienna, July 22, 1914 

Your Excellency will present the following note to the Royal Government on the afternoon of Thursday, July 23:

On the 31st of March, 1909, the Royal Serbian Minister at the Court of Vienna made, in the name of his Government, the following declaration to the Imperial and Royal Government: 

Serbia recognizes that her rights were not affected by the state of affairs created in Bosnia, and states that she will accordingly accommodate herself to the decisions to be reached by the Powers in connection with Article 25 of the Treaty of Berlin. Serbia, in accepting the advice of the Great Powers, binds herself to desist from the attitude of protest and opposition which she has assumed with regard to the annexation since October last, and she furthermore binds herself to alter the tendency of her present policy toward Austria-Hungary, and to live on the footing of friendly and neighborly relations with the latter in the future. 

Now the history of the past few years, and particularly the painful events of the 28th of June, have proved the existence of a subversive movement in Serbia, whose object it is to separate certain portions of its territory from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This movement, which came into being under the very eyes of the Serbian Government, subsequently found expression outside of the territory of the Kingdom in acts of terrorism, in a number of attempts at assassination, and in murders. 

Far from fulfilling the formal obligations contained in its declaration of the 31st of March, 1909, the Royal Serbian Government has done nothing to suppress this movement. It has tolerated the criminal activities of the various unions and associations directed against the Monarchy, the unchecked utterances of the press, the glorification of the authors of assassinations, the participation of officers and officials in subversive intrigues; it has tolerated an unhealthy propaganda in its public instruction; and it has tolerated, finally, every manifestation which could betray the people of Serbia into hatred of the Monarchy and contempt for its institutions. 

This toleration of which the Royal Serbian Government was guilty, was still in evidence at that moment when the events of the twenty-eighth of June exhibited to the whole world the dreadful consequences of such tolerance.

It is clear from the statements and confessions of the criminal authors of the assassination of the twenty-eighth of June, that the murder at Sarajevo was conceived at Belgrade, that the murderers received the weapons and the bombs with which they were equipped from Serbian officers and officials who belonged to the Narodna Odbrana, and, finally, that the dispatch of the criminals and of their weapons to Bosnia was arranged and effected under the conduct of Serbian frontier authorities. 

The results brought out by the inquiry no longer permit the Imperial and Royal Government to maintain the attitude of patient tolerance which it has observed for years toward those agitations which center at Belgrade and are spread thence into the territories of the Monarchy. Instead, these results impose upon the Imperial and Royal Government the obligation to put an end to those intrigues, which constitute a standing menace to the peace of the Monarchy. 

In order to attain this end, the Imperial and Royal Government finds itself compelled to demand that the Serbian Government give official assurance that it will condemn the propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary, that is to say, the whole body of the efforts whose ultimate object it is to separate from the Monarchy territories that belong to it; and that it will obligate itself to suppress with all the means at its command this criminal and terroristic propaganda. In order to give these assurances a character of solemnity, the Royal Serbian Government will publish on the first page of its official organ of July 26/13, the following declaration:

"The Royal Serbian Government condemns the propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary, that is to say, the whole body of the efforts whose ultimate object it is to separate from the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy territories that belong to it, and it most sincerely regrets the dreadful consequences of these criminal transactions.

"The Royal Serbian Government regrets that Serbian officers and officials should have taken part in the above-mentioned propaganda and thus have endangered the friendly and neighborly relations, to the cultivation of which the Royal Government had most solemnly pledged itself by its declarations of March 31, 1909. 

"The Royal Government, which disapproves and repels every idea and every attempt to interfere in the destinies of the population of whatever portion of Austria-Hungary, regards it as its duty most expressly to call attention of the officers, officials, and the whole population of the kingdom to the fact that for the future it will proceed with the utmost rigor against any persons who shall become guilty of any such activities, activities to prevent and to suppress which, the Government will bend every effort."

This declaration shall be brought to the attention of the Royal army simultaneously by an order of the day from His Majesty the King, and by publication in the official organ of the army. 

The Royal Serbian Government will furthermore pledge itself: 

1. to suppress every publication which shall incite to hatred and contempt of the Monarchy, and the general tendency of which shall be directed against the territorial integrity of the latter; 

2. to proceed at once to the dissolution of the Narodna Odbrana to confiscate all of its means of propaganda, and in the same manner to proceed against the other unions and associations in Serbia which occupy themselves with propaganda against Austria-Hungary; the Royal Government will take such measures as are necessary to make sure that the dissolved associations may not continue their activities under other names or in other forms; 

3. to eliminate without delay from public instruction in Serbia, everything, whether connected with the teaching corps or with the methods of teaching, that serves or may serve to nourish the propaganda against Austria-Hungary;

4. to remove from the military and administrative service in general all officers and officials who have been guilty of carrying on the propaganda against Austria-Hungary, whose names the Imperial and Royal Government reserves the right to make known to the Royal Government when communicating the material evidence now in its possession; 

5. to agree to the cooperation in Serbia of the organs of the Imperial and Royal Government in the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the integrity of the Monarchy; 

6. to institute a judicial inquiry against every participant in the conspiracy of the twenty-eighth of June who may be found in Serbian territory; the organs of the Imperial and Royal Government delegated for this purpose will take part in the proceedings held for this purpose; 

7. to undertake with all haste the arrest of Major Voislav Tankosic and of one Milan Ciganovitch, a Serbian official, who have been compromised by the results of the inquiry; 

8. by efficient measures to prevent the participation of Serbian authorities in the smuggling of weapons and explosives across the frontier; to dismiss from the service and to punish severely those members of the Frontier Service at Schabats and Losnitza who assisted the authors of the crime of Sarajevo to cross the frontier;

9. to make explanations to the Imperial and Royal Government concerning the unjustifiable utterances of high Serbian functionaries in Serbia and abroad, who, without regard for their official position, have not hesitated to express themselves in a manner hostile toward Austria-Hungary since the assassination of the twenty-eighth of June; 

10. to inform the Imperial and Royal Government without delay of the execution of the measures comprised in the foregoing points.

The Imperial and Royal Government awaits the reply of the Royal Government by Saturday, the twenty-fifth instant, at 6 p.m., at the latest. 

A reminder of the results of the investigation about Sarajevo, to the extent they relate to the functionaries named in points 7 and 8 [above], is appended to this note.«

Appendix:

«The crime investigation undertaken at court in Sarajevo against Gavrilo Princip and his comrades on account of the assassination committed on the 28th of June this year, along with the guilt of accomplices, has up until now led to the following conclusions:

1. The plan of murdering Archduke Franz Ferdinand during his stay in Sarajevo was concocted in Belgrade by Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, a certain Milan Ciganovic, and Trifko Grabesch with the assistance of Major Voija Takosic.

2. The six bombs and four Browning pistols along with ammunition -- used as tools by the criminals -- were procured and given to Princip, Cabrinovic and Grabesch in Belgrade by a certain Milan Ciganovic and Major Voija Takosic.

3. The bombs are hand grenades originating from the weapons depot of the Serbian army in Kragujevatz.

4. To guarantee the success of the assassination, Ciganovic instructed Princip, Cabrinovic and Grabesch in the use of the grenades and gave lessons on shooting Browning pistols to Princip and Grabesch in a forest next to the shooting range at Topschider.

5. To make possible Princip, Cabrinovic und Grabesch's passage across the Bosnia-Herzegovina border and the smuggling of their weapons, an entire secretive transportation system was organized by Ciganovic. The entry of the criminals and their weapons into Bosnia and Herzegovina was carried out by the main border officials of Shabatz (Rade Popovic) and Losnitza as well as by the customs agent Budivoj Grbic of Losnitza, with the complicity of several others.«

On the occasion of handing over this note, would Your Excellency please also add orally that -- in the event that no unconditionally positive answer of the Royal government might be received in the meantime -- after the course of the 48-hour deadline referred to in this note, as measured from the day and hour of your announcing it, you are commissioned to leave the I. and R. Embassy of Belgrade together with your personnel.

 The note was an end result of nearly three weeks of discussion by Austria-Hungary over how to respond to the assasination of the Archduke.  Initially many in the dual Empire saw the event as Causus Belli for a short war with Serbia designed to gain territory and eliminate outside agitation.  The Emperor was himself for the war if Germany supported them, but was concerned that the support offered by Wilhelm II seemed less than unflagging.  Germany itself was in a warmongering mood, but only if the war was only against Serbia, many German politicians and the Emperor himself was worried that the war would include Russia and eventually France.  In Hungary many people in government were concerned that war with Serbia would trigger a war with Russia.  

The result was a letter that was drafted to give world powers such as the Russians a chance to back out of their support of Serbia, but that would be impossible for Serbia to accept.  

On 9 December 1928 a play oepned in London that included the young Laurence Olivier written by R.C. Sherriff.

R.C. Sherriff was a middle class British clerk who served in the 1st Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment.  During the war he fought in several major campaigns including at Vimy and Loos before he was severely wounded at Passchendaele.  He came away from the war and like many veterans sought a way to describe what he had seen to the public.

His vehicle became the play Journey's End.  The play follows a company of soldiers as they deal with the stress of combat and their own fear of death.  Expecting an attack, the soldiers deal with their stress in many ways, through drink, fantasy, arguments, and ultimately, boredom.  Sherriff had a difficult time getting the play produced because the stage industry of the 1920s was against art made about the war, but when it was produced it became an instant hit.

While the play would be produced many times, the most popular rendition of the production would not be made under the original title.  The British comedy show Blackadder Goes Forth was based on the play and used many of the scenes from that production as backdrops for the comedy routines of the show.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was interred at Artstetten Castle on the 14th of July, 1914.  

Traditionally the Hapsburg royalty are buried at the Capuchin Church Imperial Vaults in Vienna, but Franz Ferdinand's wife Sophie was not of close royal blood and the aristocracy was encouraged by Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo, to reject the couple's royal burial in these tombs.  Ferdinand was not unaware that his wife might be snubbed when they died, so he had already built a tomb Artstetten, Austria, and instructed in his will that he should not be buried without her.  

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, expecting the Austro-Hungarians to bury the heir to their throne in a large state ceremony, had planned to use the funeral where the royal heads of most European nations and many important members of government would be gathered in one place, to help defuse and slow down war preperations.  While Wilhelm hoped to gain politically from the death of Ferdinand, he was becoming alarmed that both Russia and France were talking about mobilization with the breakdown of talks between Serbia and Austro-Hungary.  He hoped to use the funeral to talk down Great Britian and France from mobilization, allowing him to support Austro-Hungary against Russia without risking a two-front war.  

These plans were foiled by Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo who refused to invite the world leaders to the funeral, and who kept the children of the Imperial couple (who had expressed forgiveness to the assasins of their parents and wanted to take a role in reducing tensions that could lead to general war) away from the public.  Oddly enough, Alfred's acts' had nothing to do with politics, despite their outsized importance on the world stage.  He merely hated Ferdinand and felt his wife was a commoner who deserved nothing but scorn.

On June 28th, 1914, Archeduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed by an assasination team lead by Danilo Ilić of Young Bosnia, and organized by Black Hand leader Dragutin Dimitrijević.  

Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the mulit-national Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he was a voice of liberal reform for the nation.  He hoped to increase the stability of the Empire by granting important rights of self-determination to many ethnic minorities.  He especially wanted to address the concerns of ethnic slavs living in the Empire to reduce tensions with neihboring nations such as Serbia and Russia.  

Black Hand members such as Dragutin Dimitrijević were concerned that their plans to create a pan-Slavic nation would be harmed by the liberal moves of the Empire.  Assasination was already a tool that the Black Hand used for political expression.  Dimitrijević was himself directly responsible for King Alexander of Serbia and his wife's assasination in 1903, and the Black Hand group he lead, devoted to the unification of Serbia, had already touched off several Balkan incidents through violent action.

The actual killer of Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, was part of an assasination team that was organized to kill the Archduke.  The team had prepared to bomb the Archduke's car, but this was unsuccessful.  Princip was able though to shoot Ferdinand and his wife after the driver of the Archduke's car took a wrong turn and stalled trying to back up.

In later years the assasination would lead to a wide range of conspiracy theories, made worse by the hatred of the Archduke shown by Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo (the Emperor's Chamberlien) who turned the royal couple's funeral into an insulting farce, and because the Serbians had actually warned the Empire of the plot, knowing its full details from Dragutin Dimitrijević.  

Link: http://www.virdea.net/french/lbpr.html

The Great War would bring the innovations of the scientific revolution to the battlefield, using tools such as wireless, aircraft, poison gas, oil powered ships, and over-the-horizon artillery to deadly effect, but there was also a number of anachronisms, such as mounted soldiers with steel breast plates and lances, but some anachronisms were purposeful and effective despite appearing misplaced on the battlefield, one of which was the continued use of black powder based rifles by the French.

The French had been the first country to issue an effective nitro-powder (smokeless) firearm with their Model 1886 8mm rifle.  This rifle had caused the world's armies to rapidly switch from their older black powder shooters to adopt the modern magazine-fed, smokeless powder weapons for nearly their entire inventories.  The last country to go to war with black powder had been the United States, who was in the process of changing their old single-shot Springfield .45 Government (.45-70) rifles to a newer Krag model firing the 30 Government round (.30-40).  

 The French though had purposefully decided to keep its old Gras and Chassepot rifles in armories.  For peacetime they had plenty of 1886 rifles to arm active soldiers, with nearly a million weapons produced by 1914.  For war time though they new they would need even more weapons, and it would be immensely expensive to make new rifles only to have them put into warehouses for a general war that might not come.  The French decided instead, when they designed the Lebel, to make sure that the newer 8x50Rmm smokeless ammunition used by frontline soldiers could be made on the same machines that manufactured the older 11x59Rmm black powder cartridges used by the Gras and Chassepot weapons.   

With the start of the war in August 1914 the 1886 model repeaters were issued to frontline units and as many second line units as could be accommodated, while second line units where given black powder firing Gras rifles.  Second line units were only suppose to act as a casualty reserve for the frontline (giving soldiers with less contemporary training time to get used to being in service before heading to the fighting) and to serve as communication troops which including loading and unloading cargo, directing traffic, and other duties that needed a soldier, but for whom minimal armament was as good as a modern repeater.  The Gras rifle was thus brought out of retirement.

Since the 11mm and 8mm French rifle bullets fired a cartridge with the same base and rim size, the weapons were also easily re-barreled.  Armories were rapidly set up to refurbish weapons damaged at the front, and these same armories could, when work slowed down, pull older 11mm Gras weapons and put 8mm barrels on them.  This weapon was known as the Fusil Gras M80 M14 Mle 1874 which shows how often the French modified their weapons to keep them in service, the M80 representing a previous improvement to the Gras service rifle.

Later it was discovered that the Gras Rifle fired a cartridge large enough to carry a useful incendiary round.  Gras 11mm rifles went into the air, used to ignite the flammable hydrogen gas used by German Zeppelins.  This continued until safe and effective incendiary rounds were developed for the Allied service cartridges allowing the machine guns mounted on fighters to perform the same service.  

 Although France was the last country to purposefully use a black powder weapon as a standard issue infantry arm, the use of the Gras rifle with black powder chambering did not end there.  Russia was shipped 400,000 Gras rifles firing the 11mm French rifle cartridge, and used them at the front as late as 1917, and afterwards they were in the hands of soldiers during the revolutions.  Russia then passed their rifles to countries on their southern border, most notably Afghanistan.  These weapons would then be found for years on arms markets in Africa and Asia, and were still making appearances on the battlefield as late as 2001 during the American-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The last regular army user of the Gras was the Greek army.  The Greeks has asked the French for these weapons in 1876, but the French had no capacity to produce them, so they gave the Greeks permission royalty free to have another country manufacture the weapons for them.  The Greeks turned to the Austrian firm Styer who made the entire production run for them.  The weapons then fought during the Great War, the Turko-Grecian war, and finally, during ww2 (World War Two) both for the Greek army and the Greek resistance.  While the weapons were not effective in the front lines after 1914, they gained fame during WW2 in the hands of Greek guerillas.  Here, the black powder was an advantage since guerrillas would make their own powder, something nearly impossible to do in primitive settings for smokeless powder.  They also proved effective for hit and run sniping, and the 11mm round was condemned by NAZI Germany on humanitarian grounds since it caused horrible injuries similar to that of a heavy machine gun.