The shot that shook the earth
Famous as the personage whose death, by pistol shot, triggered the bloodbath of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was himself a tireless, single-minded shedder of blood – that of wildlife – long before his own blood was shed, by a political assassin. His murder took place on June 28, 1914, and a month later, on July 28, exactly 100 years ago tomorrow, World War I was declared.
The Great War of 1914-18 that the archduke’s death precipitated was a war that was waiting to happen, whether or not the royal dignitary met his death the way he did. The stage was set, and only a cue was wanted for war to break out. The cue was the report of that pistol shot.
Franz Ferdinand with one of the elephants he killed in Kalawela, Ceylon, in January 1893. imagesofceylon.com/people
The political and economic climate of Europe had been steadily brewing conditions for a major continental conflict. Tension was rising as countries started to flex muscle and jostle for advantage through colonial expansionism and military might. Nationalism was asserting itself; the Slavic community of Serbs in Austria-Hungary wanted to be a part of neighbour Serbia. Alliances were forming that would see one party ready to defend the other in case of an emergency; defence pacts emerged between Germany and Austria-Hungary, Russia and Serbia, France and Russia, and Britain, France and Belgium.
On Sunday, June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was on a visit to Sarajevo, capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, when Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old Serbian nationalist, member of an anarchic gang known as the Black Hand, shot dead the archduke and his wife.
Austria-Hungary, as expected, retaliated a month later by declaring war on independence-seeking Serbia. Russia rushed to Serbia’s aid, declaring war on Austria-Hungary. Germany duly declared war on Russia, while France and Britain moved against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Great War was set in motion.
This article is not about the Great War. It is about Franz Ferdinand the hunter and cold-blooded killer of wildlife whose own violent death started the war.
When the archduke faced the barrel of Princip’s pistol, at point-blank range, that Sunday morning in Sarajevo, there must have been a flash of recognition; the royal now would know at last what it was to be at the receiving end of a firearm. (Princip’s bullet entered the archduke’s windpipe). Obsessed with firearms, the archduke had aimed guns at wildlife all his adult life. His record for killing animals must surely be unsurpassed. At the time of his death, he had on his hands the blood of 274,889 creatures (the archduke kept count) – furred, feathered, warm- and cold-blooded – dispatched on his own terrain and across the globe, from Ceylon and India to the Dutch East Indies and Australia.
Franz Ferdinand’s favourite castle, Konopischt, near Prague, is a mausoleum of animal heads. His great recreational joy in his own hunting grounds was shooting deer and eagles. He bagged a total of 5,000 deer, and shot his 100th eagle on May 9, 1911.
In 1892, when he was 29 years old, Franz Ferdinand set out on a 10-month voyage around the world, accompanied by an entourage of 400. He travelled on a cruiser, Kaiserin Elisabeth, and kept a daily diary. The 2,000-page work was published in 1896. It is rich in detail, and colourful, and painstaking in its recording of events. The archduke is observant, responsive to natural beauty, and trigger-happy.
Despite a demanding schedule, Franz Ferdinand faithfully maintained his diary during his globe trot, even at the end of days filled with state visits, sight-seeing and hunting, schedules that would have worn out lesser men. And his diary notes were not brief. The entry for January 11, 1893, for example, when the archduke was in Kalawewa, during a state visit to Ceylon, runs to some 2,200 words (500 words longer than this story that you are reading). We do not know if he padded out his diary later with a wealth of background information.
To get a sense of what the touring, gun-toting archduke’s schedule was like, let’s keep to January 11, 1893. Over the previous days, in Kalawewa, the archduke had been talking and stalking elephant. At four in the morning on the 11th, the moon and stars bright above, he and his crew go sniffing for elephant.
“We advanced about five hundred paces when I heard the elephants and saw a large elephant shortly after in a small clearing,” Franz Ferdinand notes. “He stood calmly and browsed now and then on the bushes. A glorious view. My hunter’s heart was beating faster in view of this giant reminding me of anti-diluvian animals. I sneaked up as close as possible, aimed at the ear and pressed the trigger, and saw the elephant go down with the shot. . . .
“I was still standing on the spot I had fired the first shot when I saw, six paces in front of me, a huge single elephant with long tusks break out of the thicket into the small clearing at full speed. My second barrel was still loaded and so I fired at the spot between eye and ear. A trumpet-like sound was the response and the apparently heavily wounded giant careened off . . .
“I shouted . . . that I had bagged two elephants. I . . . personally cut off the two tails that serve as trophies . . . and upon the particular request of the Sinhalese to mount upon my two elephants to mark the moment of possession.”
From killing the two jumbos, the archduke proceeded to shoot at a “mighty bull” of a buffalo, noting its “blood-shot” nostrils. That night, back at the bungalow, the archduke is entertained by his hosts to a devil dance.
The photograph of Franz Ferdinand with his kill invites deep consideration. It carries a heavy load of content and mixed emotion. It is historic, and in its brutish way, heroic. For many today, including animal lovers and conservationists, it would be tragic. You could fit a string of titles to the disturbing image: Victor and Vanquished. Man versus Beast. Lords of the Jungle. Might as Right.
It must be remembered that the hunt has always been a royal recreation. But even by 19th century standards of blue-blooded machismo, the archduke’s appetite for hunting was deemed abnormal. By today’s standards, it seems pathological.
The photograph, a study of an aristocratic thirst for blood, is a black-and-white glimpse into certain 19th century values, and the ancient, sanctioned world of royal privilege and pursuit.
The photograph shocks through scale, the majesty of the fallen beast, whose head and face we do not see, contrasting with the spindly ridiculous figure of the victor, whose vacuous face we do see. The vanquished is majestic, even in death, while the victor is pure puppet, pint-sized and possibly puffing from the exertion and thrill of the kill. He is puny, piffling, petty, but also rather pretty, cutely kitted out as he is. If the prop of his rifle were taken away, he would shrink, lose balance, fall over. The gun rescues him. Without his gun, he is nothing.
Franz Ferdinand’s stay in India, his next stop, saw him bag tigers, jerboa and civet. The hunt goes on. While on board, he took potshots at sea creatures. In the Dutch East Indies, he shot a crocodile, and in Australia he killed kangaroo, emu, koala bears, and even a platypus.
They say a dying person sees his life unroll before him, rather like a film reel. If that were the case, then Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria would have seen, among the details of his blood-spattered autobiography, the faces and bodies of the thousands of animals he felled.
The slaughter and gore did not end with Franz Ferdinand’s sticky end.
The war his death brought on spilled over into a flood, a sea, of human blood. Sixteen million deaths, military and civilian, and 20 million wounded.