The public spaces of Sarajevo were entirely reordered. Amid new parks and squares, fine public or semi-public (religious) buildings arose, influenced in conception by Vienna but carefully reflecting the historic past and cultural realities. These included the Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox seminary, the Regional Government (now Presidency) Building, the Muslim Reading Society Hall, a Turkish-style bath, and the Regional Museum. The dominant style can be criticised for its "Orientalism", an artificial blend of East and West, but it was highly appropriate and often — as with the town hall (bombed in the recent war, but now restored and reopened) — quite magnificent.

The system which Apis, Princip and the rest wanted to overthrow had proved itself in every sphere — except, perhaps, adaptability. But what empire can adapt to revolution? In any case, the immediate verdict of Sarajevo on the assassination was clear. The population rioted. During the evening of Sunday, June 28 and for most of Monday the city was in chaos as the Muslims and Croats attacked Serb shops, houses and meeting places. Two Serbs were killed. The riots were spontaneous and they were then checked with difficulty by the authorities.

Meanwhile, the mildness exercised towards the plotters and perpetrators is extraordinary, a notable contrast with the revenge and repression which might have been expected. No forced confessions, no Viennese equivalent of water-boarding, just plodding and methodical questioning, which eventually uncovered most of the culprits. Princip's age was investigated and since he was found to be just short of 20, he was spared execution, and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He died of typhus in April 1918 in Theresienstadt.

By then the war was drawing to its end, and so was the Habsburg Empire. Many Bosnian Serbs had volunteered to join the Serbian forces. But the majority of Bosnian Muslims and Croats had contributed enthusiastically to the Austrian cause. Bosnians came to be reckoned as among the empire's elite forces. The four Bosnian regiments — the first drawn from Sarajevo — won a total of 27,243 medals for bravery. These are not the actions of an enslaved or intimidated people.

The First World War was not, of course, as Woodrow Wilson naively suggested, the "war to end all wars". It was not even the war to end all empires. But it did transform the world — as Wilson wanted — by destroying three hereditary monarchical European empires, the Habsburg, Romanov and (parvenu) Hohenzollern dynasties, and substituting for them states based on nationality and populist ideology. Whether this is relevant to the debatable "justice" or otherwise of the war, itself, is a matter of definition. Quite clearly it has no bearing upon, and cannot detract from, the sacrifice made by those who died in it.

But the political question remains. Were states based upon Communism (the Soviet Union), or Nazism (the Third Reich), or the various extreme and exclusionary kinds of nationalism that came to prominence after the Great War an improvement on the system that preceded them? The turbulent and bloody experience of Sarajevo since that double murder on the Latin Bridge should confirm our doubts. Princip's bullets tore through Europe's heart.