When Diplomacy Fails presents the July Crisis Anniversary Project, a day-by-day account of the events that occurred 100 years ago.

Sazanov's Day

Today is the 24th of July 2014, and on this day in history 100 years ago,

occurred the following events. This means European war, was the phrase Sergei Sazanov,

the Russian foreign minister, greeted his chief of staff with at 10 IM 100 years ago.

Though he had known of the Austro-Hungarian plans to deliver an ultimatum for days,

he had not yet read the ultimatum, and though the Russian ambassador in Belgrade had wired

through some of the details, it would be the upcoming meeting with Count Zappery,

the Habsburg ambassador to Russia, that would bring

the Russian completely up to speed.

Sazanov was likely taken aback, not by the fact that the ultimatum existed, but that it had

been delivered as the rumours that suggested.

For days, Sazanov had been together with the French president, Raymond Puan Coray and only the night before when Sassanov had been finalizing the farewell process had news of the ultimatum filtered through.

A full ten hours before Sassanov exploded with his memorable remark, he had thus been made aware that the Habsburg Empire had crossed the line, and thus his claimed that the whole event mid-European war

likely suggests his intentions to pursue a certain policy, rather than an exclamation of

surprise, as has often been believed. Sassanov, Puancaret, and many others did know that

Austria had been planning to deliver a harsh, unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia within a few days. They knew that it had

been designed to coincide with the French president leaving St. Petersburg, thanks for Russian

cryptographers, and that Vienna would thus have to act soon. Though a wealth of warnings have been

delivered to the German and Austrian ambassadors in the days before that made veiled threats

against such a course of action, the communication defects of the time, combined with other

factors, meant that the Austrian foreign minister, Leopold von Burttold, was still unaware that

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