by Susan Flantzer  © Unofficial Royalty 2020

On June 11, 1903, 26-year-old Alexander I, King of Serbia and his 38-year-old wife Queen Draga were brutally shot, mutilated, and thrown out a window at the Stari Dvor (Old Palace) in Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia.

Alexander I, King of Serbia

The only surviving child of King Milan I of Serbia and his wife Natalija Keschko, Alexander I, King of Serbia was born on August 14, 1876, in Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia. On March 6, 1889, King Milan unexpectedly abdicated in favor of his twelve-year-old son. A regency was supposed to be in place until his 18th birthday but in 1893, 17-year-old King Alexander proclaimed himself of age and dismissed the regency council to take royal authority for himself. The following year, King Alexander abolished the 1889 liberal constitution and restored the former conservative 1869 constitution.

On July 8, 1900, 24-year-old King Alexander suddenly announced his engagement to 36-year-old Draga Mašin, a widow and a former lady-in-waiting to his mother. The proposed marriage was met with great opposition. Draga was of unequal birth but more importantly, since Alexander had no siblings, he needed to have a child to secure the succession and there were doubts that Draga could provide an heir. Alexander’s parents were banished from Serbia because of their opposition to the marriage.

King Alexander attempted to reconcile the political forces in Serbia by granting a new liberal constitution, introducing into Serbia for the first time a two-chamber national legislature system. On May 8, 1901, King Alexander announced that Queen Draga was pregnant and that Serbia would soon have an heir to the throne. However, it soon became apparent that Queen Draga was not pregnant. Whether Draga deliberately told a lie about being pregnant or whether she was the victim of a delusion by a doctor is not known. The incident completely undermined the reputation of King Alexander and Queen Draga.

On March 25, 1903, irritated by the independence of the Senate and the Council of State, King Alexander suspended the constitution for thirty minutes which was enough time enough to publish decrees dismissing and replacing the members of the Senate and Councilors of State. This act greatly increased dissatisfaction in the country. In addition, the Serbian Government had decided to proclaim Prince Mirko of Montenegro as heir-presumptive to the Serbian throne, but King Alexander had his own ideas. Rumors began to circulate that Nikodije Lunjevica, one of the two unpopular brothers of Queen Draga, was to be proclaimed heir-presumptive to the throne.

To learn more about Alexander and Draga see:

• Unofficial Royalty: Alexander I, King of Serbia
• Unofficial Royalty: Draga Mašin, Queen of Serbia

The Assassination

The army had had enough. A conspiracy called the May Coup was organized by the military,  to replace King Alexander I of the House of Obrenović with Prince Peter Karađorđević of the rival House of Karađorđević which had held power in Serbia in earlier times. The coup was carried out by a large group of officers and civilian conspirators led by Captain Dragutin Dimitrijevic Apis, later promoted to Colonel. Among the conspirators was Alexander Mašin, an army officer and the brother of Queen Draga’s first husband Svetozar Mašin. Svetozar Mašin had died at age 35 in somewhat mysterious circumstances. A questionable doctor’s report said the cause of death was a heart attack. Draga inherited Svetozar’s pension and his name. Alexander Mašin was so opposed to this that he later accused Draga of killing his brother and became one of the conspirators in the May Coup.

On the night of June 10-11, 1903, the conspirators, divided into five groups, met in cafes in Belgrade. At 12:45 AM, Dragutin Dimitrijevic commanded the five groups to proceed to the Stari Dvor (Old Palace). Retired Lieutenant General Alexander Mašin, brother of Queen Draga’s first husband, had already entered the Twelfth Regiment barracks to take command. Lieutenant Colonel Petar Mišić was preparing to go to the palace with his Eleventh Regiment. Other conspirators had already surrounded the homes of government ministers to block any action from the ministers.

At 2 AM, Commander of the Palace Guard, Petar Živković, later Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, opened the palace doors to the conspirators. The conspirators stormed the palace and clashed with some members of the Palace Guard. Two conspirators, members of the Palace Guard, were supposed to have unlocked the doors to the royal chambers, but they were discovered dead. No keys were discovered in the pockets of the two deceased conspirators and so the royal chamber doors were opened by dynamite.

The royal chambers were extensive and the conspirators had searched for a long period but had not found King Alexander and Queen Draga. As the conspirators searched the royal bedroom once again, they noticed a slit in an upholstered wall where a door to a secret room was hidden. King Alexander and Queen Draga had hidden in the secret room. King Alexander thought the conspirators were members of the Palace Guard and the secret door opened and out came King Alexander and Queen Draga.

The conspirators opened fire with their revolvers and rifles. Queen Draga tried to protect her husband with her body. Other conspirators from other parts of the palace, hearing what was happening, ran into the royal bedroom and emptied their revolvers and rifles into the king and queen. Their bodies were then stabbed and slashed with sabers and bayonets and finally thrown from the window into the courtyard.

Along with the king and queen, the conspirators also killed Prime Minister Dimitrije Cincar-Marković, Minister of the Army Milovan Pavlović, and General-Adjutant Lazar Petrović.

An autopsy was carried out in the early morning hours on the pool table in the palace. Queen Draga’s two brothers, Nikodije and Nikola Lunjevica, were executed by a firing squad on the same day. Alexander I, King of Serbia and Queen Draga were secretly buried at St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade, Serbia. The assassination resulted in the extinction of the House of Obrenović. Prince Peter Karađorđević was then proclaimed as the new King of Serbia and the House of Karađorđević reigned until the monarchy was abolished in 1945.

What happened to the conspirators?

For the most part, the conspirators were not punished. Under pressure from some foreign governments, the new King Peter removed any palace aides-de-camp that had taken part in the coup but promoted them to higher positions. Some conspirators were brought to trial but were only forced into early retirement. Junior conspirators were never punished for their participation in the coup.

Many prominent conspirators, led by Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis, founded a secret military organization called the Unification of Death, popularly known as the Black Hand. The Black Hand was best known for being involved in the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Serbia, a catalyst for the start of World War I.

Two years later, Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić decided to get rid of the most prominent members of the Black Hand movement despite being officially disbanded. Dimitrijević and several others were arrested in December 1916 on false charges for the attempted assassination of Prince Regent Alexander, the future King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, in September 1916. Dimitrijević and the others were found guilty of treason and executed by firing squad. In 1953, Dimitrijević and his co-defendants were all posthumously retried by the Supreme Court of Serbia and found not guilty because there was no proof of their alleged participation in the assassination plot.

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Works Cited

• En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Alexander I of Serbia. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_I_of_Serbia [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Black Hand (Serbia). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia) [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Draga Mašin. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draga_Ma%C5%A1in [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Dragutin Dimitrijević. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragutin_Dimitrijevi%C4%87 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• En.wikipedia.org. (2019). May Coup (Serbia). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Coup_(Serbia) [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• Flantzer, Susan. (2019). Draga Mašin, Queen of Serbia. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/draga-masin-queen-of-serbia/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• Flantzer, Susan. (2019). King Alexander I of Serbia. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/king-alexander-i-of-serbia/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].
• Sr.wikipedia.org. (2019). Мајски преврат. [online] Available at: https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%98%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019]. (May Coup from Serbian Wikipedia)