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 It is outrageous." The Archduke then very shortly drove back in procession from the town hall to the railway station.

He had proceeded but a very short distance when a second attempt was made on his life. This attempt was successful. First, a bomb was thrown at his motor car by another Slav, a Bosnian high school student named Princip, who also belonged to the Serb Orthodox Faith. The bomb did not explode. Princip thereupon fired three shots from a pistol. The first shot hit the Archduke in the neck. The Duchess, seeking to cover his body, threw herself in front of him and affectionately held him in her arms. The second and third bullets followed, finding their destination in the bodies of the royal couple, who by this time were completely locked in one another's embraces. General Potiorch, Chief of the Administration, who was sitting in the Archduke's motor car, escaped injury. The Archduke and the Duchess were rapidly conveyed to the General Official's residence, the Archduke meanwhile rousing himself with a final effort to implore his wife: "Sophie, live for our children!" but both, when they reached the house, were past all human aid, and there and then they received the Last Sacrament and breathed their last.

In his death, the Archduke showed the noblest and best side of his character. Strong-willed and determined in all things during his life, he met his death as a strong man should, with perfect bravery. That his wife should have died under such circumstances was perhaps as she herself would have wished, apart from consideration for her children. She was his morganatic wife. Within a year after the accession of the Archduke to the position of heir-presumptive, that is to say twenty-four years ago, he shocked the traditions and broke the "House-Law" of the Hapsburgs by marrying Countess Sophie Choteck, a Bohemian lady. Notwithstanding her position as a morganatic wife, and that the children of the union would be unable to succeed to the dignities of their father, husband and wife started upon a career which undoubtedly had in end, as its object amongst other things, the ultimate entry of the Countess into all the rights attached to lawful wifehood. So far were they successful that she was advanced in dignity to a Princess and given the title of the Duchess of Hohenburg, and ultimately was received by the Crowned heads of Europe as nearly as possible as if she were in sovereign-law as well as in law generally the regular and lawful consort of the Archduke.

On the 28th day of July, 1914, Austria declared war on Servia, one month exactly having intervened since the date of the assassination of the Archduke. It would seem that the assassination was