Umberto I of Italy

Shot on 29 July 1900 at Monza by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci; the king who had praised a bloody Milan massacre died in his own kingdom.

Overview

Umberto had reigned since 1878 through colonial defeat at Adwa and years of social unrest. After his general Bava Beccaris cannonaded bread rioters in Milan in 1898, killing hundreds, the king decorated him, inflaming socialist and anarchist opinion. Bresci, a weaver who had emigrated to New Jersey, returned with a revolver and fired four times at the king attending a gymnastic festival at Monza. Umberto died on the spot; Bresci was sentenced to life and found hanged in prison in 1901. His son Victor Emmanuel III succeeded him. The murder of a king by an emigrant anarchist sharpened the era obsession with immigrant terrorism and secret police surveillance, and briefly wobbled a monarchy already strained by the repression of the Bava Beccaris years.