stylistic:style_transfer
Outbreak of World War I

On 28 June 1914 Franz Joseph's nephew and heir-presumptive Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslav nationalist of Serbian ethnicity, during a visit to Sarajevo. Franz Joseph learned about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand from his adjutant, cavalry General Eduard von Paar, who also wrote the emperor's reaction in his diary: "one has not to defy the Almighty. In this manner a superior power has restored that order which I unfortunately was unable to maintain."

While the emperor was shaken, and interrupted his holiday to return to Vienna, he soon resumed his vacation at his Kaiservilla at Bad Ischl. Initial decision-making during the "July Crisis" fell to Count Leopold Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister; Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the chief of staff for the Austro-Hungarian army and the other ministers. The ultimate resolution of deliberations by the Austro-Hungarian government during the weeks following the assassination of the Archduke was to give Serbia an ultimatum of itemized demands with which it was virtually certain Serbia would be unable or unwilling to comply, thus serving as a "legal basis for war".

A week after delivery of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, on 28 July, war was declared. Within weeks, the Germans, Russians, French and British had all entered the fray which eventually became known as World War I. On 6 August, Franz Joseph signed the declaration of war against Russia.