In the evening of Tuesday, June 23, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, crown prince of Austria-Hungary,

and his wife, the Duchess Sophia, prepared for their long-scheduled trip to Bosnia

to observe Austrian army maneuvers. The first leg of the journey was a train ride from Vienna to Trieste.

As they prepared to leave, the Archduke was heard to remark,

This thing isn't especially secret, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few Serbian bullets waiting for me.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. Episode 74, A few Serbian bullets.

All the way back in episode one, I told you the story of how the suicide of Archduke

Rudolf, the only son of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, left the emperor's nephew, Franz Ferdinand,

the heir presumptive to the empire.

It is difficult to take the measure of the man.

He grew up a Habsburg heir,

served in the Austrian army,

as one does when one is a Habsburg heir,

acquiring the rank of lieutenant

at the tender age of 14 and Major General by 31.

He was not well liked. He could be brusque,

and he could be moody, and he had a tendency toward angry and intemperate outbursts. In a place like Imperial Vienna, the elite aristocrats could, and did, remember small slights for a very long time.

It was perhaps in 1894 when the Archduke was 31 that he first met the woman who was to be the

love of his life, Sophia Hotech, the daughter of a bohemian Count, and four years the Archdukes Jr.

We don't know exactly when this relationship got going because they kept it secret for some time,

because Franz Ferdinand knew full well that the Hopsburgs would not approve of it.

You might think, well, Sophia is a count's daughter, right? So what's the problem?

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