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Lest We Forget š¹
At the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month, their guns fell silent. The bombs ceased to drop. The Great War was over.
After four years of chaos and carnage that cost nine million soldiers and ten million civilians their lives, and left twenty-one million wounded, World War 1 finally came to an end.
The Great War ā named so because of the sheer scale of the conflict ā is believed to have been sparked after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28th June 1914 was traced back to a Serbian extremist group that wanted to increase Serbian power in the Balkans by breaking up the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
A month later, on July 28, Austria-Hungary retaliated by declaring war on Serbia and on July 29 began to shell the Serbian capital.
Russia, Serbiaās ally, intervened and gathered an army of troops to fight back against Austro-Hungarian forces. As did France, Russiaās ally.
However, Germany, who had sided with the Austro-Hungarian cause, then declared war on France and as German forces crossed through neutral Luxembourg and Belgium to attackĀ theĀ FrenchĀ borders, this prompted Great Britain to declare war on Germany, fulfilling their obligations as Belgiumās ally.
