The Fool On The Hill

St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague

I can't let the day go by without reminding everyone that today, 28th June, is of course St. Vitus Day. Saint Vitus' Day is celebrated on June 28 according to the Gregorian calendar, and on June 15 according to the old now defunct Julian calendar.

I suspect that all this is not something that a lot of people will know and even fewer will even care about but nevertheless it is an important day in all our histories.

Sunday June 28th, 1914 was the day that the heir apparent to the Austria-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinard and his wife Sophie choose to officially visit the town of Sarajevo in Bosnia. He'd attended the army manoeuvres in the mountains nearby and a state visit to the town seemed to everyone a very good idea. The Emperor Franz Josep had visited the town a few years before and had been received well, the streets being full of cheering crowds so a repeat performance was obviously expected for his nephew.

Of course, since then several things had changed, not least the fact that Austria were in effect the occuping force in 1914 having annexed the country in 1908. In addition nobody in the diplomatic circles of the Austrian government seems to have taken any note of the date involved because as any Serb will tell you June 28th is celebrated by every Serb as the sacred day of Vidovdan the day that their armies were defeated ( and their King Lazar killed ) by the Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. A long time ago, you may say but to a persecuted race like the Serbs a date not to be forgotten. It is possible that the confusion over the Gregorian and Julian calendars may be the reason as the Julian calendar was still in use by the Eastern Orthodox church.


Sarajevo Town Hall (or what remains of it - its interior was destroyed by Serb artillery in 1994.)

Perhaps the date was not really that important but it all served to add further insult to the visit. A young nationalist, Gavilo Princip, fired the gun that killed both of the couple who died within minutes. The security was non-existent and after one bungled attempt that resulted in injuries to one of the party on the way to the Town Hall, Princip struck on the return journey after the driver of the lead vehicle mistook the turning. The car of Franz Ferdinard stopped just 5 feet from the nervous youth and the rest is history.

After the Austrians decided that war with Serbian would be the result of the assasination, the rest of Europe reluctantly agreed and the First World war, or The Great War as it was known then, began on August 4, 1914.

How many died during the war? The estimates vary but always give figures in millions. Around 15. The start of the conflict is now 92 years ago so the effect of 15 million dead can only be read and imagined. It was all a long time ago and we only have memories of what our grandfather may have told us or what we have seen in the documentaries.

But it all started in the small town of Sarajevo on St. Vitus Day 1914.