Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian Serb student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.
Princip was born in western Bosnia to a poor Serb peasant family, at the age of 13 he was sent to Sarajevo, the capital of Austrian-occupied Bosnia, to study at the Merchants’ School before transferring to the gymnasium where he became politically aware. In 1911, he joined Young Bosnia, a secret local society aiming to free Bosnia from Austrian rule and achieve the unification of the South Slavs. After attending anti-Austrian demonstrations in Sarajevo he was expelled from school and walked to Belgrade, Serbia to continue his education. During the First Balkan War Princip traveled to Southern Serbia to volunteer with the Serbian army’s irregular forces fighting against the Ottoman Empire but was rejected for being too small and weak.
In 1913 following the unexpected success of the Serbians in the war against the Ottomans, the Austrian military governor of Bosnia declared a state of emergency, dissolved the parliament, imposed martial rule and banned all Serbian public, cultural, and educational societies.