![]() ![]() ![]() He clearly searches out every scrap of information about Princip, and extrapolates as much as he can from the surviving documentation. In other words, he didn't leave much of a paper trail.īutcher does the best he can. He was unheralded and unknown before his historical moment, and he died in prison, forgotten in the hurricane of blood and destruction he'd set in motion. The problem, for me, is that Butcher doesn't do a great job "hunting the assassin." For long stretches of the book, Princip seems to disappear completely. His prose is engaging and detailed and The Trigger is an effortless read. Along the way Butcher dodges landmines from the Balkan Wars, talks to a couple fishermen, and eats wild mushrooms.īutcher writes in a journalistic style, which makes sense, since he was a journalist and war correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. Afterwards, he sets off on foot with his Bosnian friend Arnie to recreate Princip's overland journey to Sarajevo. He meets with Princip's family, and engages in a lengthy conversation with them about their illustrious/infamous ancestor. He begins in the tiny town of Obljaj in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Princip was born. He sets out to follow Princip's path to political murder by literally following his path. But at the time.)īutcher's style will be quite familiar to anyone who's read Vowell or Horowitz. In July! In a Subaru! We can all laugh now, about how a Park Ranger had to find me and inform me of a cataclysmic diaper blowout. (Let me tell you about the time I dragged my wife and six-month old daughter to the Battle of Cowpens. I have a great affinity for Historical Road Trips, mainly because I've made so many myself. When I found out, however, I wasn't bothered. I didn't know this when I purchased The Trigger, for the reason that Amazon's one-click shopping allows me to make impulse buys without undergoing any sort of decision-making process. Well known authors who've contributed to this genre include Sarah Vowell ( Assassination Vacation) and Tony Horowitz ( Confederates in the Attic). Rather, it is an entry into the genre I call Historical Road Trips, a hybrid literary form that combines elements of travelogue, memoir, and history. I wanted to read about the man who unwittingly struck the match that set the world aflame, the man who is usually given a couple sentences at the start of any World War I history, before receding into the dustbin.īutcher's account is not a standard biography. When I came across Tim Butcher's The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War, it caught my eye for precisely this reason. The assassin himself, a nineteen year-old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip, is usually treated as little better than a footnote. But even the most detailed volumes I've read usually relegate the actual Sarajevo assassination on June 28, 1914, to a page or two. There are a lot of books about the July Crisis, even more so during the centenary commemorations. Exactly why this happened - why the murder of an unloved Austrian archduke in a Bosnian city by a Serbian nationalist caused Germany to invade Belgium to get at France in order to defend themselves against Russia - is a far more complicated story.įranz Ferdinand's death precipitated the so-called July Crisis of 1914, a period of diplomatic maneuvering between Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Russia, France, and Great Britain that ultimately ended with the "Guns of August" and one of the bloodiest, most inexplicable wars in human history. ![]() At least, that's about as much as I knew, when I started my World War I crash course several years ago. Tim Butcher, The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to WarĮven if you know nothing (or practically nothing) else about World War I, you probably know that it started with the assassination of Austro-Hungarian heir Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo. Princip took the Browning pistol in his hand, stepped forward from among the crowd on the pavement next to the entrance of the cafe and fired." ![]() For the instant it took the driver to find reverse, the Archduke was a sitting duck. Instead of his target speeding past, Princip saw the Archduke slow right in front of him only a few feet away - the gallant count, so willing to protect the life of his liege, on the running board on the other side of the car. When General Potiorek spotted what was happening he shouted at the driver, ordering him immediately to stop and reverse back out onto the Appel Quay. "The driver's decision to turn into Franz Joseph Street and not continue down the Appel Quay, as had been decided back at the town hall, was a stroke of assassin's luck for Princip. ![]()
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