Popular resentment in the Bosnian countryside at this failure to end serfdom stored up a legacy of bitterness that was to find dramatic expression in 1914. Standing trial for the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914), heir to the Austrian throne, the young Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918) declared: ‘I have seen our people being steadily ruined. I am a peasant’s son and know what goes on in the villages. This is why I meant to take my revenge and I regret nothing.’ The shadow cast by serfdom across nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe was long indeed.
