Planning direct action
In what year did Apis and his fellow military conspirators dominate the Black Hand.
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria May Coup (Serbia) Black Hand (Serbia) List of coups d'état and coup attempts Winfield Scott Hancock
Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria-Planning_direct_action May_Coup_(Serbia)-The_assassination Black_Hand_(Serbia)-Demise List_of_coups_d'état_and_coup_attempts-1903 Winfield_Scott_Hancock-Execution_of_Lincoln_assassination_conspirators
Planning direct action. Danilo Ilić was a Bosnian Orthodox Serb. He had worked as a school teacher and as a bank worker but in 1913 and 1914 he lived with, and outwardly off, his mother, who operated a small boarding house in Sarajevo. Secretly, Ilić was leader of the Serbian-irredentist Black Hand cell in Sarajevo. In late 1913, Danilo Ilić came to the Serbian listening post at Užice to speak to the officer in charge, Serbian Colonel C. A. Popović, who was a captain at the time and a member of the Black Hand. Ilić recommended an end to the period of revolutionary organization building and a move to direct action against Austria-Hungary. Popović passed Danilo Ilić on to Belgrade to discuss this matter with Chief of Serbian Military Intelligence Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known more commonly as Apis. By 1913, Apis and his fellow military conspirators (drawn heavily from the ranks of the May 1903 coup) had come to dominate what was left of the Black Hand. There are no reports as to what took place between Ilić and Apis, but soon after their meeting, Apis's righthand man and fellow Black Hander, Serbian Major Vojislav Tankosić, who by this time was in charge of guerrilla training, called a Serbian irredentist planning meeting in Toulouse, France. Amongst those summoned to the Toulouse meeting was Muhamed Mehmedbašić, a carpenter by trade and son of an impoverished Muslim noble from Herzegovina. He too was a member of the Black Hand, having been sworn into the organization by Black Hand Provincial Director for Bosnia-Herzegovina Vladimir Gacinović and Danilo Ilić. Mehmedbašić was (here quoting Albertini paraphrasing Mehmedbašić) "eager to carry out an act of terrorism to revive the revolutionary spirit of Bosnia." During this January 1914 meeting, various possible Austro-Hungarian targets for assassination were discussed, including Franz Ferdinand. However, the participants decided only to dispatch Mehmed Mehmedbašić to Sarajevo, to kill the Governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek. On his way to Bosnia-Herzegovina from France, police searched Mehmedbašić's train for a thief. Thinking the police might be after him, he threw his weapons (a dagger and a bottle of poison) out the train window. Once he arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina he had to set about looking for replacement weapons.
The assassination of the royal couple was carried out by conspirators who were all Army officers. They were led by Captain Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis and Норман Перовић, who was in the pay of the Russians and the leader of the secret society "Ujedinjenje ili Smrt" (Union or Death), popularly referred to as the "Black Hand", which supported the plot. The killings took place as planned on the night between the 28th and 29th of May, (Old Style calendar - still in use in Serbia at the time). The conspirators from the interior arrived in Belgrade the day before, under various pretexts. Together with their Belgrade comrades, they were divided into five groups and spent the night in various pubs in town. That night King Alexander had dinner with his ministers and the Queen's family. Naumović gave a sign to the conspirators that the royal couple was asleep by sending one of his subordinates to bring his tippet from his home. After midnight Captain Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis commanded the departure toward the royal palace. At the same time, Colonel Aleksandar Mašin went to the 12th regiment barracks to take command. Lieutenant Colonel Petar Mišić was preparing to depart with his 11th regiment toward the court. Several units of conspirators surrounded the houses of the Prime Minister Dimitrije Cincar-Marković and senior officers loyal to King Alexander. Guard Lieutenant Petar Živković, on duty that night, unlocked the gate at 2:00 AM. Searching for the royal couple was unsuccessful for nearly two hours. During this time, Captain Jovan Miljkovic, an aide familiar with the conspiracy but who refused to participate, and Mihailo Naumović (unknown to the conspirators) were killed. The doors to the King’s bedroom were shattered with dynamite, but no one was in bed. Unknown to the others, Apis spotted someone escaping down the stairs into the courtyard. He thought it was the King and ran after him. It turned out to be one of the King's loyal guardsmen and in the gunfight that erupted, Apis was wounded with three bullets to his chest, surviving due to his strong constitution. Nervous because of the failure of the search, the approaching dawn, and the disappearance of Apis, who was lying wounded in the basement of the palace, the conspirators believed that the plot had failed. They had soldiers bring the King's first aide-de-camp, General Laza Petrović, who had been captured as soon as the conspirators entered the courtyard. He was ordered to reveal whether there was a secret room or passageway, threatening to kill him within ten minutes if he failed to comply with their demands. Petrović peacefully waited for the expiration of the deadline. The subsequent course of events is not precisely known. According to one version, the officers again entered the Royal bed chamber where Cavalry Lieutenant Velimir Vemić observed a recess in the wall which appeared to be the keyhole of a secret door. The King and Queen were hidden there. According to another version, which was partially accepted for the script of the series The End of Obrenović Dynasty, the King and Queen were hiding behind the mirror in the Royal bedroom where there was a small room used for the Queen's wardrobe. Cupboards covered a hole in the floor which was the entrance to the secret passage (which allegedly led to the Russian Embassy located opposite the palace). Upon the conspirators call to come out, Alexander demanded from the conspirators that they confirm the oath. According to one version, they did and according to another, they threatened to bomb the palace if Alexander didn't open the passage. After Alexander and Draga came out, Artillery Captain Mihajlo Ristić fired at them using all the bullets in his revolver, followed by Vemić and Captain Ilija Radivojević. The King fell dead from the first shot. The Queen tried to save his life by blocking his body with her own. General Petrović was killed immediately afterwards and the bodies of the King and Queen were thrown from a window. What is certainly known of the events of that night is that the King and Queen were eventually discovered hiding inside a wardrobe and then both savagely killed. Their bodies were mutilated and afterwards tossed from a second floor window onto piles of manure. Diplomatic correspondent, historian and author C. L. Sulzberger relates the account given to him by a friend of his who had participated in the assassination under Captain Apis: The assassination squad "burst into the little palace, found the King and Queen cowering in a closet (both in silken nightgowns), stabbed them and chucked them out the window onto garden manure heaps, hacking off Alexander's fingers when he clung desperately to the sill". This account would indicate that King Alexander was killed after he had been thrown out of the palace. The assassination of King Alexander coincided with the 35th anniversary of the assassination of his predecessor Prince Mihajlo. The remains of the Royal couple were buried in St. Mark's Church. That same night, the Queen’s brothers Nikodije and Nikola Ljunjevice were killed by a firing squad commanded by Lieutenant Vojislav Tankosić. Prime Minister General Dimitrije Cincar-Marković and Minister of Military General Milovan Pavlović were killed in their homes. The third member of Cincar-Marković's government, Interior Minister Velimir Todorović, who was also marked to be killed, was instead severely wounded and lived until 1922. 
Towards the end of 1916, due to political intrigues, Serbian Prime Minister Pasic decided to destroy the leaders of the Black Hand and break up the organization. By the spring of 1917, many Black Hand leaders, including Apis, had been arrested. A sham trial before a military tribunal in Salonika was held in May 1917 for Apis and others. Among the charges was that the Black Hand had attempted to murder Prince Regent Alexander. Though witnesses against them were numerous, the evidence cited was nearly all hearsay or outright fabrication. Apis and six others were sentenced to death. Three obtained commutations to long prison terms, but Apis and three comrades were executed by firing squad on 26 June 1917. With the demise of the Black Hand in June 1917 after the Salonika Trial, The White Hand steadily gained control of the young and ambitious Prince Alexander. In what became Yugoslavia after the war, the White Hand grew into an essential piece of the state's machinery. It continued the imperialistic work of the Black Hand, using the same techniques. The death of Vojislav Petrovic, an ex-attache to the Yugoslav Legation in London, was said to be the work of Narodna Odbrana. Petrovic was preparing a book on the history of the Sarajevo assassinations and the Black Hand. 
 The Black Hand group, composed of military officers and led by Col. Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis, killed Alexander I of Serbia in "coup d'état" named Majski Prevrat (May Overthrow)  
Post-war military service. Execution of Lincoln assassination conspirators. At the close of the war, Hancock was assigned to supervise the execution of the Lincoln assassination conspirators. Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14, 1865, and by May 9 of that year, a military commission had been convened to try the accused. The actual assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was already dead, but the trial of his co-conspirators proceeded quickly, resulting in convictions. President Andrew Johnson ordered the executions to be carried out on July 7. Although he was reluctant to execute some of the less-culpable conspirators, especially Mary Surratt, Hancock carried out his orders, later writing that "every soldier was bound to act as I did under similar circumstances."