Giesl’s departure from Belgrade and the severing of diplomatic relations between the Monarchy and Serbia created a new situation in Europe. From the beginning of the Sarajevo crisis, Berchtold later argued, Vienna’s aim had been to coerce the Serbian government into giving both a guarantee that the assassination plot would be thoroughly investigated, and, to reinforce it, a pledge to refrain in future from any anti-Habsburg activities. Belgrade’s reply to the démarche offered nothing of the kind, as Giesl confirmed personally when he called on Berchtold and his senior officials at the Ballhausplatz at 4 p.m. on 26 July. The envoy’s declaration, Berchtold recalled, was decisive: ‘practically nothing had been achieved with the Serbian move and that everything would remain unchanged . . . It would have meant deceiving ourselves had we accepted an apparent but in concreto useless success.’

It must be doubted whether Giesl’s pronouncement was indeed key to decision-making at Vienna. Austria-Hungary’s last envoy to Serbia had merely done what he had been told to do. But Berchtold was satisfied that the breach with Belgrade bore Giesl’s imprimatur. ‘None of us’, one of the officials at the Ballhausplatz explained, ‘could have done it; only a soldier could do it’. Giesl’s profound knowledge of the Balkans and the Southern Slav peoples – he was married to a Serbian lady – also offered a convenient umbrella for protection against current and later criticism. Berchtold himself had worked purposefully towards conflict with Serbia, a third Balkan war that would roll back the recent expansion of the neighbouring kingdom and reassert Austria-Hungary’s beleaguered position and waning influence in the region. The ‘tunnel vision’ of the Habsburg leadership was exclusivly focused on this single object, the diminution, if not outright destruction, of Serbia.