On 28 July 1914, a month after the assassination at Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia by telegram, and that night its Danube monitors opened fire on Belgrade. Within a week Russia, Germany, France and Britain were at war. On 28 July 1864 US troops attacked a Lakota and Dakota camp at Killdeer Mountain.
A month after Sarajevo
On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo, as told on our 28 June page. With German backing, Austria-Hungary handed Serbia on 23 July an ultimatum whose demands were deliberately unacceptable, as told on our 23 July page. Vienna rejected Serbia's reply and further attempts at mediation by the other powers.1
War by telegram
Austria-Hungary no longer had a minister in Belgrade, so on 28 July the declaration of war went to the Serbian government by telegram. Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, wrote that Serbia had not answered the note of 23 July in a satisfactory manner, and that "Austria-Hungary consequently considers herself henceforward in state of war with Serbia".2
In the early hours of 29 July Austro-Hungarian river monitors on the Danube opened fire on Belgrade. The historian Manfried Rauchensteiner calls these the first shells of the war.3
From a local war to a world war
The historian Annika Mombauer writes that the declaration started the "local war" Vienna's leaders had wanted. It did not stay local. Russia answered with mobilization against Austria-Hungary, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August and on France on 3 August, and Britain entered the war on 4 August.4
Battle of Killdeer Mountain
28 July 1864 · 162 years ago
Also on 28 July: Killdeer Mountain, 1864
The attack was part of the army's campaigns of reprisal against the Sioux after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota, which had already brought Sully's attack on a camp at Whitestone Hill in 1863. On 28 July 1864 Brigadier General Alfred Sully's expedition, about 2,200 men, attacked a large camp of Lakota and Dakota bands at Killdeer Mountain, in what is now western North Dakota. Sully's report calls the mountain Tahkahokuty; a soldier's diary and the Lakota and Dakota name both give its meaning as the place where they hunt or kill deer. Sitting Bull was among the leaders in the camp.5
The army's artillery decided the fight, driving the defenders from the ravines, and most of the people escaped into the Badlands of the Little Missouri. Sully's troops then destroyed the abandoned camp, its lodges and its stores of food. Children left behind were killed by the army's Winnebago scouts.6
How many died is disputed. Sully judged 100 to 150 killed; Thomas Isern and Aaron Barth of North Dakota State University write that Native losses exceeded 100 and were mostly noncombatants; the Native account that Doane Robinson recorded in 1904 gives thirty-one. Army losses were light, a handful of men killed. Sully went on into the Badlands, where the same bands fought him again in August.7
