When Diplomacy Fails

The July Crisis Anniversary Project

A day-by-day account of the events that occurred 100 years ago.

Sazanov's Deception.

Today is the 26th of July 2014, and on the stay in history 100 years ago,

occurred the following events. In the early hours of Sunday, the 26th of July, Russia's period

preparatory to war was underway in European Russia. Although the Russian foreign minister,

Sergei Sazanov, had previously claimed that Russia wouldn't mobilized until Austria attacked Serbia,

Russia was in fact undertaking a definite step towards the commencement of hostilities.

The major architect behind these moves was the Russian foreign minister.

A man once upheld as too timid, too unwilling to act,

whose track record of inaction during the Balkan wars

had lulled Austro-Hungarian statesmen into a false sense of security.

Sergei Sazanov, by summer 1914, was a man of a different form altogether

than the one Vienna thought it was dealing with. When the French president had visited in the

days before, he had heard rumors about Sazanov's weaknesses, and he had been told by some

belligerent Montenegrin princesses about the foreign minister's apparent spinelessness,

an inability to take a strong stand. President Ponceuray at the time had hoped that Sazanov's

shortcomings could be offset by the strength and convictions of the Tsar, yet it was Sazanov who operated

on a level never before seen in his character.

Now that he had gained approval for this course of action,

and now that the Tsar had given his blessing for the period preparatory to war,

...