Indeed this pistol is the most powerful there ever was! With just a few rounds it killed millions of people. No other pistol can claim such efficiency.
So, how to do that with a small pocket pistol chambered for a 9x17mm cartridge, also known as .380ACP, 9mm Browning short, 9mm Corto and 9mm kurz? That is not a lot of power in itself, though quite lethal at shorter ranges.
Well, sometimes it comes down to what target you choose, and in this case it was bulls-eye, to say the least.
June 28th 1914 a group of killers were waiting along the route that the Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was to take in Sarajevo.
The first assassin lost his nerve and did nothing. The second one threw a bomb, but as it had too long a delay it exploded under another car behind Franz Ferdinands car. The would-be assassin ran onto a bridge, followed by the police, he threw himself off the bridge and into the river, but landed in soft mud in shallow water, so he tried to kil himself with cyanide. But, either the cyanide was too old or the illicit seller had given them something else. He simply got a bit sick, and was arrested there in the mud, retching.
The cortège then veered off course and took another route, and for the assassins all was lost….
Another assassin, a young student by the name of Gavrilo Princip, was outside a cafe. All was lost, his chance had gone. But, the Arch-Dukes driver made a fatal mistake. He took a wrong turn, and the car slowed down right in front of the cafe. Gavrilo stepped forwards, pulled his pistol out of his pocket and fired. Franz Ferdinand and his wife were both killed.
Gavrilo Princip also tried to ingest the cyanide, but also just got sick, and the conspirators were all arrested.
The rest, of course, is history. Franz Ferdinand was not popular, his manner was, to say the least, abrasive. But, his murder led to the famous Austro-Hungarian ultimatum against Serbia, and that got the ball rolling. It was the spark that set off the powder keg that was Europe at the time, and the result was a world war.
Gavrilo Princip, was not executed for this, though his co-conspirators were. He was a teenager and as such exempt from the death penalty. He died of tuberculosis in prison in 1918.
So, what was the gun he used? It was the Browning Model 1910 in .380ACP.
Mine was made a few months before the gun that Princip used. It is by serial number less than 3000 apart from it. My pistol has been in storage at Fabrique Nationale in Belgium together with Princips gun before being shipped out. It is about as close as a collector can get to Princips weapon.
So, with this I end with the immortal words of Jaroslav Haśek, from the satirical novel The Good Soldier Svenja:
“Today there are very few honest people about, Mrs Müller. I can imagine that His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, made a mistake in Sarajevo about that chap who shot him. He saw a gentleman and thought, “He must be a decent fellow who’s giving me a cheer.” And instead of that he gave him bang! bang! Did he give him one bang or several, Mrs Müller?’
‘The newspaper says, sir, that His Imperial Highness was riddled like a sieve. He emptied all his cartridges into him.’
‘Well, it goes jolly quickly, Mrs Müller, terribly quickly. I’d buy a Browning for a job like that. It looks like a toy, hut in a couple of minutes you can shoot twenty archdukes with it, never mind whether they’re thin or fat. Although, between you and me, Mrs Müller, a fat archduke’s a better mark than a thin one. You may remember the time they shot that king of theirs in Portugal? He was a fat chap too. After all, you wouldn’t expect a king to be thin, would you? Well, now I’m going to the pub, The Chalice….’”