On 1900, Sunday July 29th at 10 PM Gaetano Bresci an Italian anarchist from Prato, near Florence, killed the king of Italy Umberto I firing him four shots while he was moving on an open carriage to the Villa Reale (Royal Villa) in Monza, near Milan, where he spent his summer vacation. At the time of his death Umberto was fifty-six years old and was a king for twenty-two years, from January 9th, 1878. Less than a year later they "killed himself" Gaetano Bresci in the penitentiary of the island of Santo Stefano.
Early
years
Gaetano Bresci was born in Coiano, a hamlet in the municipality
of Prato, on November 10th, 1869, a day before Umberto's
son, who became king at the death of his father with the name
of Vittorio Emanuele III.
According to Rivista Anarchica (1971)
Bresci was actually
born the same day as Vittorio Emanuele, but after the regicide
his birth date was changed, to avoid the coincidence. Petacco
supports the same thesis and writes that the original date can
still be found in the municipal registers of Prato. Actually,
the recent publication on the State Registry Offices website (link) of
the birth records written by the municipality of Prato, including
that of Bresci, (1st part and 2nd part), allows to verify that the registration
of the newborn Gaetano Bresci was performed on 13th
November by the midwife, who declared his birth on 10th
November, 1869 at 10 am.
Even the parish baptism register
reports November 10th as
birth date, and is
completed with two additions by canon A. Valaperti, written after
the regicide: one in Latin: "melius erat ei si natus non
fuisset homo ille" ("it would have been better
if that man wasn't born") and then "ad perpetuam
rei memoriam" ("for perpetual memory of the offender")
and one in Italian: "questo infame la sera del dì
29 luglio 1900 a Monza assassinò con 3 colpi di rivoltella
l'ottimo Re nostro Umberto d'Italia. Sia pace all'anima benedetta
di lui ed obbrobbrio sempiterno all'infame assassino"
("this infamous man on the evening of the day July 29th,
1900 in Monza murdered with 3 revolver shots our excellent King
Umberto of Italy. Be peace with the blessed soul of Him and everlasting
disgrace to the infamous murderer").
The native home of Gaetano lies in
Coiano in the locality "I Ciliani" in via delle Girandole,
58, currently named via del Cilianuzzo (according to Santin and
Riccomini the current name is via Baracca). Gaetano was the youngest
of four children of Maddalena
Godi, housewife aged fourty-four, and Gaspero (or Gaspare), farmer
aged fourty from Capezzana, owner of a small farm. The first-born
son Lorenzo was born on October 13th, 1856, he worked as a cobbler,
and was married with Stella Magri; the second-born son Angiolo,
born 1861, was a lieutenant in the 10th artillery regiment stationed
in Caserta; the third-born daughter Teresa was born June 18th,
1867, she was a housewife, and in 1890 she married the carpenter
Augusto Marocci from Castel San Pietro (Bologna).
Political
maturation
Gaetano started to work as a cobbler with his brother Lorenzo,
when he was a kid, then in 1880 his father made over the most
part of his arable land to Hans Kössler in order to get a
place as apprentice weaver for him at the "Fabbricone"
("the big factory") in Coiano di Prato, established
in 1888 by the German firm Kössler, Klinger, Meyer &
C. (Borsini). Eleven years old Gaetano worked
fourteen or fifteen hours a day, as he himself declared in the
trial. (Zucca) On Sundays he attended the municipal
school of arts and trades of textile and dyeing at Prato, becoming
a silk decorator, and as soon as fifteen years of age he was a
skilled worker. He worked as a weaver at Vannini company in Florence,
in Compiobbi and in Gello, with Cesare Zeloni firm. On February
26th, 1891 he lost his mother Maddalena. Gaetano
began to frequent the anarchist associations of Prato, and in
December 1892, at the age of 23, he joined the first strike, then
repressed by the military occupation of the factory, following
which Bresci resigned. The police then kept a file on him as "dangerous
anarchist", and he was sentenced on December 27th,
1892 by the magistrate of Prato for "contempt and refusal
to obey the public force" to a 20 liras fine and 15 days
of imprisonment, later remitted. He was found guilty of defending
vehemently, at 10 pm on October 2nd, 1892, a butcher boy who the
municipal police wanted to fine (Galzerano, pag. 115). According to other sources it was instead
a baker who was keeping the shop open after the closing time (Marzi). From the report drawn up by
the police it appears that Bresci told the policemen: "It
would be better if you went on your way, and leave this poor worker
alone. Weren't you workers? But sure, now you're not anymore!
Now you are the exploiters' servants. You are a bunch of spies
and vagabonds! " Bresci would have refused to declare
his personal information, but the following day he was reported
together with his comrades Augusto Nardini, Altavante Beccani
and Antonio Fiorelli (Zucca).
He was again detained, "for public safety measures",
in 1893 and 1895, and assigned for more than a year to confinement
in Lampedusa along with 52 other anarchists of Prato, in application
of the repressive laws issued by Francesco
Crispi. He was freed, together with his comrades, in May 1896,
thanks to an amnesty granted for the defeat of March 1th,
1896 in Adwa battle,
in the Ethiopian War.
On December 22nd, 1895 Gaetano lost his father
Gaspero, who was aged sixty-five (link
with the death records of Prato municipality). In the following
years he found difficult to be hired for his criminal record ,
and he frequently changed employment, although one of his employers
testified at the trial: "I must honestly allow that I
had few workers like him". After having sought in vain
a job in Prato, he moved to Ponte all'Ania,
a hamlet of Barga in the upper part of Lucca province, where in
1896 he was hired by "Michele Tisi & C." textile
factory.
In Ponte all'Ania it seems that he often went on the banks of
Ania creek to shoot the pebbles, showing
he had excellent aim. In summer 1897 he had a son from (Maria
or maybe Assunta Righi), a coworker, and at the beginning of autumn
he returned to Coiano to borrow thirty liras from his brother,
to contribute to the expenses for the baby (the so-called "baliatico").
Then he returned to Ponte all'Ania for a few weeks; at the end
of October he resigned from Tisi company, then came back again
to Coiano, where he announced that he would go to America.
Despite being self-taught, Bresci always showed an excellent cultural
level and a multiplicity of interests, which went beyond politics.
The Santo Stefano prison doctor, Francesco Russolillo, told that
his eyes "concealed burning flames and abysses"
and that Bresci "had a culture and a soul that, hadn’t
they been turned to evil by a work of moral destruction, would
have made of him the best of intelligent workers." (Galzerano, pag.
803)
In the
United States
Bresci left Genoa
with the steamer "Colombo" on January 18th,
1897, landing on January 29th in New York where he was hosted
by his comrade Gino Magnolfi. As soon as he arrived he found a
job in Pennsylvania, and a year later at Givernaud & Co. and
Schwarzenbeck silk factories in West Hoboken (currently Union
City), in New Jersey, where he stayed for about three years. Then
he moved to Hamil and Booth Co. silk factory in Paterson, also
in New Jersey, about 20 km from West Hoboken and 21 miles (34
km) from New York, and then to Emelburg. He stayed in Paterson
the entire week, dwelling at Bartholdi's Hotel and having dinner
at Both boarding house, on 345, Straight Street, also named Italians’
Road, and returned on Saturdays at West Hoboken, where he had
kept his home, on 263, Clinton Avenue, and where in August 1898
his partner Sophie Knieland came
to live with him. She was born in New York in 1865 and she had
Irish origin and they met in April in Weehawken park. According
to a deposition issued by Sophie after the regicide, she and Gaetano
had married before a justice of the peace. Gaetano and Sophie
had two daughters, the eldest, born on January 8th,
1899, was called Maddalena (Madeline), like her paternal grandmother,
and the younger, who was born after the attack, on September 28th,
1900, was named Muriel, also known as Gaetanina.
Paterson was a city of immigrants, with a strong Italian presence,
and was an important anarchist center in the USA, where Bresci
found many fight comrades he met in Italy. According to The New
York Times of December 18th, 1898, two thousand five hundred
out of ten thousand Italians residing in Paterson, declared themselves
anarchists and three thousand five hundred purchased regularly
the anarchist journal in Italian language "La
Questione Sociale" (Mazzone).
One week after his arrival, Bresci enrolled in the Society for
the Right to Existence; a month later he bought ten one-dollar
shares of "Era nuova" publishing company. Bresci
collaborated with "La Questione Sociale", for
a period directed by Errico Malatesta,
who arrived in Paterson in August 1899, coming from London, via
Tunisia and Malta, reached after escaping from his confinement
in Lampedusa, on the night between April 29th
and 30th, 1899.
Bresci took regularly part in meetings, even if he did not talk
frequently, and when he did so he spoke calmly and without raising
his voice. He often began with the foreword "a little
observation", which became a sort of nickname with which
he was called.
In Paterson Malatesta, a supporter of the collectivist tendency,
had arguments with the individualist anarchist Giuseppe
Ciancabilla from Rome, director of the other anarchist newspaper
of the town, "L'Aurora", who until 1897 was a
socialist, collaborator of Socialist Party’s newspaper "Avanti!".
On August 30th, 1899 in Tivola and Zucca's Saloon,
on Central Avenue, West-Hoboken the two anarchists clashed in
a virulent quarrel, during which Bresci would have saved Malatesta's
life, tearing the revolver from the anarchist barber Domenico
Passigli’s (according to others "Pazzaglia") hands,
who had attacked Malatesta, wounding him in a leg.(see the
news on "Avanti!"
of 18 September). The same Bresci, during the regicide's trial,
testified that he wasn’t there during the argument (Galzerano, pag.
106), while in another interrogatory
confirmed that he had disarmed the barber, while Ciancabilla wasn’t
there (Galzerano,
pag. 118).
The newspaper "Gazzetta
di Torino" of August 2nd, 1900 presented the event as
no less than "an American revolver duel". In
the ideological controversy between the two Bresci was closer
to the individualist positions of Ciancabilla, whose newspaper
"L’Aurora" applauded the regicide of Monza,
while Malatesta, in an article entitled "Cause ed effetti"
didn’t subscribe to Bresci’s deed, though identifying
its causes in social injustice.
Preparation
of the attack
In February 1900 Bresci
disclosed to Sophie his impending trip to Italy, and on May 7th,
he resigned from his job in the factory and on May 10th
he asked two comrades to buy him a ticket. He embarked on May
17th, 1900 on the French steamer "La Gascogne" of the Compagnie
Générale Transatlantique, traveling in third class
and taking advantage of the 50% discount for the visitors of the
Exposition Universelle
in Paris. At the end of May Bresci disembarked at Le Havre and
then went to Paris, where he visited the Exposition. Later he
made a stop in Genoa, and on June 4th he reached Prato, where the police
commissioner rejected to grant him a firearms license. From 20th
June to 8th July he was in Castel San Pietro
(province of Bologna), where his sister Teresa lived with her
husband, who was also Bresci's workmate at the Fabbricone. In
Castel San Pietro he stayed at the Osteria della Palazzina, managed,
together with her husband, by Stella Magri's sister, wife of her
brother Lorenzo. On July 8th he went to Bologna to attend
the commemoration of Giuseppe Garibaldi, by the monument
to the hero, which had been inaugurated
less than one month before, then returned to Castel San Pietro,
on July 19th and on July 20th
he was in Bologna, then in Parma, Piacenza and on July 27th,
he arrived in Monza, where Umberto stayed since the Saturday of
the previous week, July 21st. Bresci arrived in the morning
in Monza railway station and
found an accommodation not far from there, in a boarding house
in via Cairoli 14.
Some student deem that Bresci developed the idea of attacking
the life of Umberto as he disembarked in Italy, but the prevailing
thesis is that he had left the USA specially to carry out "the
wicked plan of the execrable regicide", as can be read
in the decree of commitment for trial. In Prato the anarchist
practiced at the National
Firing Range of Galceti. There are testimonies of how Bresci
was proud of his aim, and how he frequently gave practical demonstrations
of it, using bottles as a target, which he managed to break by
passing the bullet from their neck.
The attack
On the evening of
July 29th, Bresci went to the training
field of the Gymnastic Club "Forti e liberi",
in via Matteo da Campione, very close to the Villa Reale, where
the king had to reward the athletes at the end of a gymnastics
exhibition. The anarchist at 9:30 pm saw the king arrive on a
Daumont carriage pulled by two pairs
of horses. but he did not attempt the attack and just identified
Umberto, to prevent confusing him later with the other passengers
of the carriage. The anarchist was elegantly dressed, with a straight
collar, a black necktie, a pocket watch with chain and a ring
on his finger. He had the Hamilton & Richardson, "Massachussets"
of 1896 five shot revolver with
him, which he had bought for 7 dollars in Paterson on 27th
February, on each bullet he had made with scissors several incisions,
as they told him the American bandit Jesse
James used to do, in order to increase their dangerousness,
making the penetration easier in case the king had worn an armor,
and making easier the wounds to infect.
At 10:30 pm, after the prizes awarding ceremony, the king went
back into the carriage and was about to leave the gymnasium field,
heading for the Villa Reale, a few hundred meters away. Lieutenant
General Emilio Ponzio Vaglia, minister
of the Royal Household, and Lieutenant General Felice
Avogadro di Quinto, first aide-de-camp were with Umberto.
In the map published by the socialist
newspaper "Avanti!" the place of the attack is
shown, and a cross marks the position of the carriage. The king
was standing inside the open carriage and about to sit down, when
Bresci fired the four shots being only a few steps away.
Umberto was reached by
the first shot in the back side of his neck, then he turned instinctively,
and was hit by two more shots in the chest, in the cardiac region,
while the fourth bullet was found, without blood traces, on the
bottom of the carriage, and therefore it didn't hit the target,
maybe because it was deflected by a punch that the Marshal of
the Carabinieri Giuseppe Braggi gave Bresci's arm. Umberto collapsed into the carriage and ordered
the coachman: "Go ahead, Go ahead!" and, asked
how he felt, replied: "I don't think it's anything serious".
He was taken to the Villa and laid down on his own bed,
where after fifteen minutes after the attack he died.
The three shots out of four that hit the target testify to the
good aim of Bresci, while the fifth cartridge in the revolver
was not fired, and was found in the cylinder, along with the four
casings of the bullets which were fired.
The artist Flavio Costantini (1926-2013) depicted the regicide in several
works (1 , 2
and 3). The weekly journal "La
Domenica del Corriere" published a picture
of Umberto which indicated as a possible last photo taken
to the king.
Why the
attack was made?
The motive of the
attack was the revenge for the massacres of workers, ordered to
repress uprisings of protest, like those in Conselice (province
of Ravenna) in 1890, in Sicily and in Lunigiana in 1894 and in
Milan in 1898, where the Army
fired on the protesting crowd, assassinating hundred of persons
(the exact number has never been assessed). The Milan rising arose
from the ill-famed "grist-tax" which provoked a huge
increase of bread and flour prices, whence followed the assault
to the bakeries and the hardest repression, carried on even by
means of guns. In addition to the slaughter of workers, also the
massacre of 9,000 Italian soldiers in the catastrophic Ethiopian
War of 1896 planted the seeds for the regicide.
The anarchicot Amilcare Cipriani in
the booklet "Bresci e Savoia"
of September 1900 wrote: "from the immense crowd of victims
of misery and massacres of Lunigiana, Sicily and Lombardy an avenger
arose, Bresci" (Galzerano, 2001, pag.41). It's clear that the support given by Milan
bourgeoisie to the repressor troops, with the slogan: "Tirez
fort, visez juste" ("shoot hard, aim right")
had been received by Gaetano Bresci, who declared at the trial:
"after the state of siege in Sicily and Milan, illegally
established by royal decree, I decided to kill the king to avenge
the pale victims".
The same Umberto I, to whom many people attribute the political
responsibility of the massacre, awarded with the Grand Officer
Cross of Military Order of Savoy and with the appointment as Senator
of the Kingdom the Piedmontese general Fiorenzo
Bava Beccaris, who had ordered
the massacre, as Royal Special Commissioner with full powers,
congratulating him for defending
the civilization. The journalist Paolo
Valera, a witness of the massacre, wrote in 1899: "In
the phraseology of the general you always find something of the
master who talks to his servant and something of the imbecile
who has taken from the military school nothing more than the brutality
of his trade". During the trial, Bresci recalled the
massacres committed and the fact of having seen "the authors
of the May massacres being rewarded instead of hanging them"
as the cause of the regicide. The anarchist Armando
Borghi remembers how after 1898 in the revolutionary circles,
the killing of Umberto I was considered "a useful first
step towards a republican revolution".
The intolerance of Umberto and above all of his wife, the Queen
Margherita for the protests of the people, shared by many of the
military top ranks and by the industrialists, brought to elaborate
a project of institutional coup d'etat, which foresaw the dissolution
of the Parliament, seen as inactive and infiltrated by the socialists,
transferring the power to the king and to the most reactionary
politicians.
The authoritarian turn of the end of the century was completed
by a law which reduced the electoral body by 847,000 electors,
lowering the voters' percentage on the total population of Italy
from 9.8% to 6.9% (Feldbauer).
Bresci's attack was not the first assassination attempt against
Umberto I: previously Giovanni Passannante,
from Salvia di Lucania (province of Potenza), on November 17th,
1878 in Naples and Pietro Acciarito
from Artena (province of Rome), on April 22nd,
1897 in Rome,
on the Appian way, as the king was heading to Capannelle
racecourse tried in vain to stab the king. For Acciarito the trigger
of the attack was the indignation for the fact that the king had
offered a 24 thousand liras prize to the winning horse, while
many Italians, including Acciarito, were in serious financial
straits (Centini).
Giuseppe Ciancabilla in Paterson's "l'Aurora"
wrote "The mistakes made by Passannante and Acciarito
taught us that today that a repeating handgun is more reliable
than a dagger!", While the same Umberto I, after the
two knife attacks, had foreseen that when the attackers will have
left the dagger aside and grab the gun he would be doomed. (Felisatti)
The newspaper Il Messaggero of 18 May 1890 reports a deed
demonstrating that Umberto was aware of the danger of a good gun
shooter: when he visited a shooting competition he saw that a
famous fencing master had obtained an excellent score in the shooting
gallery, and he shook his hand, congratulating him and commenting:
"much better than a sword!".
Umberto
Umberto, who ascended
to the throne on January 9th, 1878, was known, according to
the iconography favorable to him, as "the good king",
but the massacres he ordered or endorsed earned him the popular
name of "grapeshot gun king".
According to the patriot and minister Silvio
Spaventa King Umberto "is unfortunately ignorant:
that is to say that he does not have the necessary and adequate
culture for his time and degree". Umberto himself said
to his son: "remember that it's enough for a king to know
how to draw his own signature, read the newspaper and ride a horse"
(Galzerano,
2001, pag. 147).
According to his aide-de-camp, lieutenant-colonel Paolo Paolucci
delle Roncole, the king had no interest or cultural curiosity
and no tendency for arts, he didn't read any book and even writing
was painful and tiring to him (Silipo).
The anti-fascist historian Gaetano
Salvemini (1873-1957) in “Terrorismo e attentati individuali”
of 1947 wrote: "Umberto was a tyrant in the classic sense
of the word, supporting the strangulation of liberties [...] Bresci's
memory is surrounded by a halo of sympathy and gratitude in the
conscience of many Italians [...] the great majority of the country
found that Umberto had not stolen that revolver ball".(Sacchetti).
Francesco Crispi defined Umberto “a chump who let himself
be guided by false scruples of constitutionalism”, the
mayor of Rome Alessandro Guiccioli accused him of lack of will
and of the “clear insightfulness of the high and noble
mission that [he] would be entitled to”, while the President
of the Senate Domenico Farini judged him to be scarcely frank,
fickle, often ignoring anything, nor reading the newspapers. Once
he had gone to talk about a serious government crisis, he realized
that Umberto had fallen asleep, moreover, he didn't think anything
else than hunting or women, leaving himself vulnerable to a thousand
gossip. (Felisatti)
Umberto was known
for his hectic sexual activity, in addition to his wife he had
an official mistress, the duchess
Litta, née Eugenia Attendolo Bolognini, who was also
lover of his son Vittorio Emanuele and of Napoleon III,and who
was involved in the financial scandal of the Banca Romana, and
acquitted like all the other powerful persons under investigation
(Lisanti). Umberto anyway also frequented
Rosa Vercellana "la bela Rosin"
("the beautiful Rosie"), who had became official
lover of his father at the age of 16. Umberto needed a continuous
turnover of women, chosen from photographs, received at the palace
and dismissed with an envelope containing money, which calls to
mind more recent Italian rulers, as well as the passion for underage
girls, for example the fourteen-year-old Cesarina Galdi, a Count's
daughter, who he had made pregnant, as she herself reported after
the regicide.
(Galzerano,
2001, pag. 147-155)
After
the attack
Bresci let himself
to be arrested soon afterwards
the regicide, whitout offering resistance, and declared: "I
didn't kill Umberto. I killed the king. I killed a principle."
At least eight people competed for the "credit"
of having stopped Bresci; immediately after that some of the bystanders
tried to lynch him, and the police avoided it happened. The anarchist
always showed a calm demeanor, and three days after the attack
a newspaper informed: "he always eats cynically".
(Galzerano,
2001) Right after
the attack the authorities established a kind of cordon sanitaire
around Monza and the news about the regicide spread with difficulty.
The first journalistic reports
displayed that the regicide was a certain Angelo Bressi, then
they corrected themselves and
provided more details.
The criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909),
close to socialist ideas, in a text of 1894 had defined Passannante
and Acciarito as insane and degenerate, while he classified Bresci
as a "criminaloid", with mediocre intelligence,
who had suffered the impoverishment of his family of origin. He
was driven to crime by fanaticism, though not being part of a
plot, incompatible with the indiscipline and the amorphism that
Lombroso attributed to the anarchists (Galzerano, 2001, pag 838). Moreover Lombroso, speaking
of Bresci, said that there were no signs of pathology or criminal
traits (according to the pseudoscience of the time), claiming
that for the regicide “the urgent cause lies in the very
difficult political conditions of our country” blaming
"the maximum guilt of the ruling classes [which is] not
to heal the evils that spoil us but to inexorably strike those
who reveal them. A strange remedy indeed, which would be enough
by itself to show how deep have we descended.” (Zucca)
Lev
Tol'stoj so commented the regicide: "Those ones, you
always see them in their military uniform bearing at their side
the instrument of the murder, the sabre. Murder is a job for them.
But if only one of them is murdered, then you'll hear them complain
and be indignant".
The French socialist newspaper "L'Aurore", the
same that on January 13th, 1898 had hosted the "J'accuse" by Émile
Zola, that reopened the Dreyfus affair, published on August
1st a commentary
by Albert Goullé that ended with "When a head of
state orders the death of twenty, fifty, a hundred men of the
people, the murdered are blamed as criminals. When a man of the
people becomes an avenger of the murdered, he is the abominable
murderer."
The anarchist activist Luigi Galleani defned Bresci as “The
sparkling archangel of popular revenge and social justice”,
while Armando Borghi in “Errico Malatesta” (Milan,
1947) wrote “Bresci came to us from abroad armed with
three requirements: an iron will, a precision handgun and excellent
shooting quality" (Rosada).
The Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti,
in his article "Due date" ("Two Dates")
published on "Il comunista" of August 17th,
1922 wrote: "The violent death of Umberto was the surfacing,
in a tragic and heightened form, of a deep conflict, of a contrast
of real forces […] that is still up to the history to solve.
In the firm hand and in the trustworthy eye of the individualist
anarchist almost symbolically the will and the strength of the
masses took their shape, angrily raised to protest against the
power of the Italian State oppressor, starver, shooter and cop"
(Affortunati,
pag. 81).
Giuseppe Galzerano in his very complete work on Gaetano Bresci
(2001), shows a review of comments published
in various countries, after the attack, showing that several Italian
who carried out attacks against heads of state were considered
as heroes. The examples are Felice
Orsini who had carried out an attack against Napoleon III,
emperor of France, Guglielmo Oberdan,
who had attempted to kill the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph,
Agesilao Milano, who tried to
assassinate the King of the Two Sicilies Ferdinand II, Antonio
Carra, who had stabbed to death the Duke Charles
III of Parma. Amilcare Cipriani, in the booklet mentioned
above, commented: "I do not understand the reason why
the same act, according to the person who commits it, or to whom
it is aimed, is considered an act of heroism or a murder." (quoted by Galzerano,
2001, pag. 52)
Among the authorities
who presented their condolences for the death of Umberto was US
President William McKinley, who about
a year later, on September 14th, 1901, died as a result of the
revolver shots that eight days earlier the American anarchist
of Polish origin Leon Czolgosz had
fired to him in Buffalo, inspired by the gesture of Gaetano Bresci,
so much so that a newspaper clipping on Monza attack was found
on him.
Bresci was taken to Monza jail where he was interrogated and tortured,
as reported by the anarchists, but also by the Socialist MP Filippo Turati, on "Critica
sociale", and as can be guessed by various details,
such as the blood stains left on the carriage that transferred
him from Monza to Milan and as the way he moved limping. During
the trial one of the attending journalists wrote "He still
bears the markings of beatings on his face" (Petacco). The anarchist always maintained
a calm demeanor, apart from the protests for the obligation to
wear a straitjacket, motivated by the need to prevent him from
committing suicide, which appears as an early building of an alibi,
for the purpose of supporting the future sham suicide of Santo
Stefano.
Gaetano's
family after the attack
In 2020 Andrea Sceresini published on "La Repubblica"
unpublished news about what happened to Gaetano Bresci's wife
and daughters after the attack in Monza. Sophie Knieland changed
her surname into Niel (Mazzone) and,
after Gaetano's death, she moved to Cliffside Park, New Jersey,
whose mayor in September 1901 ordered her to leave "to
prevent any problems". Sophie remarried with trade unionist
of German origin Joseph Mang and went to live in Newark suburbs,
near New York. In 1912 Sophie and Mang separated and she moved
to Chicago, where Muriel was entrusted to the custody of a group
of anarchists, while Sophie and Madeline moved to Glacier Park
in Montana, where the mother worked as a cook at a cafeteria.
In 1913 the family gathered in Seattle, and after a year moved
to California, where Sophie worked as a cook and her daughters
went to work as cleaning ladies by families, then moved in San
Francisco on Monterey Boulevard. Mother and daughters opened a
food kiosk in the port area, at first they had problems with the
local organized crime, solved thanks to the help of the dockers,
later Sophie opened a beauty salon and the daughters founded a
female musical group, the "Lorelei Syncopaters"
(see picture, Madeline and Muriel are
third and fourth from left). Sophie died in San Francisco in 1932
at the age of 67. Madeline married and died in San Francisco in
1974. Muriel married, had three daughters and moved to Fresno,
in California, where she died in January 1981, and was buried
in the local cemetery with the name of her husband, Mitchell.
The "conspiracy"
During the interrogatories
the Carabinieri police tried to compel Bresci to confess he had
accessories, what the anarchist never allowed, explaining instead
to his jailers the reasons for his deed. Bresci gave answers of
an "unrivaled sharpness", irritating the Colonel
of the Carabinieri for "the unfortunately convincing way
with which he expressed himself." (Galzerano)
After the attack news
and imaginary testimonies circulated on the world press about
the appearance of Bresci before the attack in the most disparate
countries, from Budapest to Barcelona, from Bratislava to Geneva,
from London to Brussels, from Vienna to Fiume and no less than
Buenos Aires.
The famous Italian-American detective Joe
Petrosino had also investigated in the libertarian circles
of Paterson to discover accessories and instigators of the Monza
attack, concluding that the regicide was the result of a plot
hatched by a group of Paterson anarchists affiliated with the
"Black Hand" (which at the time still had libertarian
implications) and that Bresci had been designated by drawing lots
with the raffle numbers. (Toscano) During
the investigation on McKinley murder, Petrosino interrogated and
heavily mistreated Sophie Knieland, Bresci's partner. (Toscano)
During the investigations,
in Italy and in the USA, a plethora of people came to light who
witnessed, after the attack, they were informed in advance, by
numerous and heterogeneous accomplices of Bresci, who often proved
to be non-existent on public records. The Socialist newspaper
"Avanti!" of August 26th,
1900 commented: "The accessories of the regicide are now
more numerous than Xerxes' soldiers: red and black, yellow and
blue, have prepared the crime." (Galzerano, 2001, pag. 341)
The upper echelons
of State Security, and in particular the Minister of the Interior
Giovanni Giolitti, followed with great
conviction the lead of a plot managed by the former queen of the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Maria Sophie
of Bavaria, in exile at the time at Villa Hamilton in Neuilly-sur-Seine,
near Paris, whose parlor, in addition to aristocrats and intellectuals,
hosted anarchists and socialist and republican revolutionaries,
favorably viewed as anti-Savoy. For these acquaintances Maria
Sofia was called by Marcel Proust "queen of the anarchists",
although she was the sister of Elisabeth of
Bavaria, called "Sissi", empress of Austria who
was killed in Geneva in 1898 at the age of 61 by the Italian anarchist
Luigi Lucheni. In addition to suspecting
that Maria Sofia had funded and protected Bresci and other alleged
conspirators, the Italian secret services, infiltrated among the
Italian anarchists in exile, were convinced that a plan was in
place to free Gaetano Bresci from his jail, and later from the
penitentiary.
A further lawsuit for the murder of Umberto, dedicated to the
alleged accomplices of Bresci, despite the wide number of people
under investigation, even in a brutal way, failed to go beyond
the investigation stage, for the absolute inconsistency of the
evidence collected.
Years later, Pietro Acciarito, the failed regicide of 1897, when
asked if Bresci had been instigated by someone, replied: "Whatever
society cannot take a man and tell him to kill. I say that
Bresci acted alone, if he ever had an encouragement, it was from
misery."
(Galzerano,
2001, pag. 345)
For many years, however,
the anarchist Luigi Granotti, from
Sagliano Micca (province of Biella), known as "il biondino"
(although he was not blond) was pursued as an accomplice of Bresci.
Granotti had come to Italy from Paterson two weeks after Bresci,
and was with him in the days of the regicide at Monza, which he
would have reached by train together with Bresci. Granotti would
have searched an accomodation with Breaci in the same boarding
house, and as he hadn't find it, he would have stayed at the locanda del Mercato, laying in the
same area
Granotti fleed from Italy a few days later, crossing the Alps
to Gressoney, and passing through Switzerland. Despite the sentence
to life imprisonment in absentia received on November 25th,
1901 it is not at all certain that Granotti took part in the regicide
or that he was aware of it in advance. Luigi Granotti was chased
for decades, with numerous false sightings all over the world,
from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, from London to San Francisco, from
Chicago to Singapore, and in any case he never returned to Italy
and died in New York in 1949. (link)
The reaction
The regicide triggered
the response of the most reactionary sectors of the country. The
city of Prato, birthplace of Bresci and Monza, the unaware scene
of the regicide, were hit by a sort of damnatio memoriae,
so much so that the Royal Villa of Monza, habitual venue of royal
vacations, was practically abandoned.
On the training field of the sporting society "Forti e
liberi", in the exact point of the regicide, a memorial
chapel was built in the form of a stele, called "Cappella
reale espiatoria" ("Royal Expiatory Chapel")
inaugurated in 1910, where a memorial
stone can be seen in the crypt, placed on the exact spot where
Bresci killed Umberto. The headquarters and the training field
of the sporting society "Forti e liberi" were
transferred and still lie in via Cesare
Battisti, few meters away from the original place.
The revenge against Bresci by the reactionaries and the establishment
also involved his family: his brother Lorenzo, a shoemaker, was
persecuted and imprisoned until he took his own life three years
later. The other brother, Angiolino, who had chosen the military
career and was an artillery lieutenant, was forced to change surname,
acquiring that of his mother, not to lose his job. Many other
Italians named Bresci preferred to change surname to avoid reprisals
and assaults. His brother-in-law, Augusto Marocci, worker at the
Fabbricone, and the Union organizer Giulio Braga, together with
other anarchists from Prato, including Luigi and Carlo Masselli,
were also arrested, when surprised to tear off the insignia of
national mourning.
The Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera of August 9th,
1900, in a correspondence from Paris, even blamed primary education
as a factor of incitement to regicide, since it allowed the workers
to read, and then to refer to subversive newspapers. The evidence
would have been the failed attack
to the Shah of Persia Muzaffar al
Dîn in Paris, on August 1st, three days after Monza regicide,
whose perpetrator, the anarchist François
Salson, would have been instigated by reading about the deed
of Bresci. (Galzerano,
2001, pag. 217) The
liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce
(1866-1952) mentioned Bresci as "an anarchist
who came from America" without even mentioning his name. (Petacco)
The reactionaries
also attacked Republicans and Socialists and their clubs, while
the forces of law and order not only avoid defending the assaulted
people, but instead arrested them and beat
them in turn.
The socialist Alfredo Angiolini (1900) wrote:
"There was therefore no reason to inveigh against the
socialists, yet the reactionary newspapers began to speak of conspiracies,
accused the socialists as instigators and moral responsibles of
the murder, called for new provisions, new exceptional measures
against all subversives, they made pressure on the ministry to
re-enact those liberticidal methods that had characterized the
Pelloux government, inciting the rascals and scum of the society
against the socialist newspapers, against the democratic society."
For over a year hundreds of trials for justification of a crime
were held, for facts that were totally negligible, if not ridiculous,
but which often ended with convictions for the defendants, giving
moreover the feeling that the Italian people as a whole were far
from blaming the regicide and instead Bresci enjoyed a great sympathy
and solidarity, especially among the lower classes.
The Catholic Church distinguished itself for an extreme coldness
towards the mourning of the royal family and of Italy, with whom
there were no diplomatic relations after the conquest of Rome,
with the breach of Porta Pia
on September 20th, 1870. The Pope Leo
XIII, who was ninety years old, refused to allow any religious
rites in memory of Umberto. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore
Romano explained with an icy laconicity the hostile attitude of
the Catholic Church towards the House of Savoy. Furthermore, several
priests were sentenced for justification of the regicide.
The trial
The case was prepared
for the trial in just one month, on August 17th
the Prosecution Section issued the indictment verdict. By decision
of President Luigi Gatti, the trial lasted only one day, from
9:00 AM to 6:00 PM of August 29th 1900, in the Court of Assizes
of Milan, in the palace of the Captain of Justice, in Piazza Beccaria,
heavily guarded by troops. The court refused the request of the
defense to have a postponement of the trial to more serene times.
Bresci asked to be defended by Filippo Turati, who, after a talk
with him on August 20th, the next day informed him of
his refusal, even because he hadn't been practicing for ten years.
Turati described the prisoner as pleasant, without abnormal traits,
but with "a detached and detemined person, almost glacial,
so that he makes his thought impenetrable", but who cared
about not looking like an ordinary criminal. The socialist leader,
however, judged him to have a very poor intelligence. (Galzerano, 2001,
pag. 235)
Turati's ideas about
the Monza regicide are clearly expressed in an article attributed
to him, "La successione", published in "Critica
Sociale" of August 1st, 1900: "one of those
lunatics, who at all times poured out their impulsive irritation,
and that in modern times - due to an ever more attenuating remnant
of the psychology generated by bourgeois revolutions - sometimes
still mislead themselves that they could modify something essential
in the political device, killing those who embody its most superficial
and decorative part" (Galzerano, 2001, pag. 445)
Turati recommended to Bresci to entrust his defence to the lawyer
Francesco Saverio Merlino, from Naples,
who in his youth had been an anarchist, formerly a political agitator
in the United States with the task to organize the Italian workers,
also in Paterson in november 1892, even if at the time of the
trial his sympathies were for the Revolutionary Socialists, although
he wasn't involved in political life. In 1895 Merlino, while he
was detained, was nminated for the political election in Prato
electoral constituency, supported by anarchists and socialists
(Affortunati,
pag. 59). Merlino
was appointed the day before the trial, and asked in vain for
a postponement to study the huge amount of papers, and to summon
witness for the defence residing in the US, also to ascertain
the possible existence of a plot born in Paterson of which Bresci
would have been the actual executor. Merlino was flanked by lawyer
Mario Martelli, chairman of the
Milan Bar Association, who initially was the court-appointed lawyer.
The reporters of the bourgeois newspapers went wild with negative
descriptions of Bresci, calling him "unpleasant",
"wicked", "discouraged and overcome",
"irritable and asymmetric", "repulsive",
"viper", "wild beast", "degenerate",
"reptile", "abject" and "pervert".
Physically he was "rather ugly", according to
others "very ugly", with "sunken eyes",
"surly look", "evil stare",
"big nose", "short and protruding
(?!) chin", and even "long nails". Moreover
he appeared "bony but not mighty", "skinny",
showing "very marked facial features", characterized
by "deep pallor of his face", "very weak
and trembling voice", "lacking any physical and
mental energy", not to conceal the fact that he "displays
ferocity and induces repugnance", and that "the
repugnance he provokes becomes aversion." (Galzerano, 2001,
pp. 270-275)
The newspaper Il
Correre della Sera of August 31st, 1900 even got angry with Bresci's
daughter, Maddalena, "frail and sickly, at eighteen months
had not yet got her front tooth." (Galzerano, 2001, pag. 322)
Also during the trial
the public prosecutor, in the person of the locum tenens Attorney
General at the Court of Appeal of Milan Nicola
Ricciuti, tried to substantiate the thesis of an anarchsts'
conspiracy to kill Umberto, which in his opinion was proved by
the fact that the defendant came from Paterson, the location of
a big anarchist colony. Bresci however always maintained he acted
alone and on his own initiative.
Mr. Merlino arrived from Rome without being able to sleep because
he had to study on the train the documents which were available,
and was followed by plainclothes policemen. During the hearing
he was interrupted several times by the court, by the public prosecutor
and by the public, that according Naples newspaper "Il
Mattino" was made of "journalists, plainclothed
cops and carabinieri", and tried to make them all reflect
on the fact that the violence of individuals was fueled rather
than stifled by the violence and repression of the state, and
on the utility of doing justice, rather than doing revenge, in
order not to generate further acts of violent rebellion, such
as the regicide.
Mr. Martelli in his brief defensive closing statement argued instead
that Bresci, although not crazy, was obsessed with the wrong identification
of the king with the state, and also asked him to do justice and
not revenge.
Bresci was sentenced for the crime of regicide "to the
life imprisonment, of which the first seven years in continuous
seclusion in cell, to the perpetual disqualification from holding
public office, to the legal deprivation, to the deprivation of
the testamentary capacity, considering null and void a will which
by chance he made before the sentence" (the death penalty
had been abolished in Italy in 1889 by Zanardelli's Penal Code).
The article 117 of the same code established: "Any person
who commits a deed targeted against life, integrity or
freedom of the sacred person of the King is punished with life
imprisonment" while the article 12 of the same Code established
that "life imprisonment is perpetual. It is served
in a special establishment, where the convict remains for the
first seven years in continuous cellular confinement, with the
obligation to work". It seems that his partner Sophie,
when got the news of the condemnation, forwarded a petition to
the queen mother, even if this circumstance was denied by the
anarchist environments of Paterson.
Bresci refused to lodge an appeal against the judgment to the
Court of Appeal; he was visited in jail by lawyer Mr. Caberlotto,
a collaborator of Mr. Martelli, and declared that he was only
appealing to the forthcoming Revolution. The judgment of conviction
was affixed on September 8th,
on the corners of Milan.
Santo
Stefano
Bresci's detention
and transfer procedures were always kept hidden for fear that
his anarchist comrades would try to free him. The convict was
first secluded in Milan's jail of San Vittore, then he was boarded
in La Spezia on November 30th, 1900. and on January 23rd,
1901, at 7 o'clock he was disembarked by the Italian Royal Navy
paddle wheel aviso ship "Messaggero"on
Santo Stefano island, in the Pontine Islands archipelago (see
my webpage), and at 12 he was
taken on responsibility of the register of the penitentiary
on the island.
During the sea transfer to Santo Stefano, the crew had order of
not speaking with Bresci, but it seems that a sailor, Salvatore
Crucullà, during the transfer by rowing boat from the "Messaggero"
to the island, asked the anarchist why had he killed the king.
Bresci would have replied: "I did it also for you",
triggering the laughter of the crew, who did not understand the
meaning of the sentence.
The arrival and departure dates are inconsistent with the relatively
short distance between La Spezia and Santo Stefano, and this could
be explained by a halfway detention, mentioned at the time by
the newspapers, in Portoferraio penitentiary,
on the Elba island. Bresci was detained in one of the twenty cells
of the isolation section called "La Rissa", three meters
below sea level, where Bresci, under a window, would have written
the sentence: "the grave of the buried alive."
The time spent in Portoferraio would have been the delay needed
to set up the cell allocated to Bresci in Santo Stefano (Zucca), but according to Petacco the
transfer was due to the solidarity of the other prisoners with
Bresci, also due to the continuous detention in chains, which
wasn't allowed anymore by law.
According to a report published by Naples newspaper "Il
Mattino", written by Cavalier G. Di Properzio, who visited
Santo Stefano two days after the official death of Bresci, the
prisoner in disguise left Milan to reach La Spezia, with a direct
train on the evening of January 21st, 1901, escorted by the Director
General of Prisons Alessandro Doria and by five Carabinieri. From
La Spezia station, always in disguise, and completely shaved,
he would have been taken with a public carriage to the Arsenal,
where he would have boarded the "Messaggero"
towards Santo Stefano, arriving almost two days after.
In Santo Stefano a special cell
was purposely modified for Bresci, the General Prison Department
sent the plan to cavalier Vito Cecinelli, the prison manager:
it was absolutely identical to the one Alfred
Dreyfus occuped on Devil's Island since 1895 and which would
have still occupied until 1906. In the cell previously had been
buried alive Pietro Acciarito, the failed murderer of Umberto
I in 1897, before being taken in 1904 to the Asylum for Insane
Criminals of Montelupo Fiorentino, where he ended his days in
1943.
The cell was slightly smaller than common ones, and measured 3
x 3 metres: the only furnishings consisted in a wooden bed with
a horsehair mattress (which during the day had to be lifted and
tied to the wall with big leather belts), a stool fixed to the
floor, a wooden washbowl, and the usual bucket.
The cell was separated from the others, the cells on the two sides
were taken up by the guards, and was placed at the end of a corridor
built between the offices and the depots. Even the terrace for
the exercise hour was isolated, so that the prisoner was kept
away also when his confinement was attenuated. The terrace was
the only point where his jailmates could theoretically see Bresci,
but his exercise hour coincided with a moment in which his fellow
prisoners were locked up: indeed they understood that Bresci had
died just because their daily interdiction to go out during that
hour ended (Mariani). On the terrace also two sentry-boxes were placed for the
two guards who watched him in every moment.
On May 18th, inspector Alessandro Doria reached
Santo Stefano, visited the prison, and ordered the director to
prevent the prisoner from having available a low stool, since
he could sit on the ground and lean his back against the bed,
to forbid him to keep a handkerchief and wearing cotton sweaters,
as well as buying bars of soap. He was also forbidden to write
or receive letters from his partner Sophie. (Galzerano, 2001, pag. 799)
Bresci had his feet
chained and wore the uniform with a black collar, distinguishing
lifers convicted of the most serious crimes, while the other inmates
had a yellow collar. His daily meals consisted of a soup without
meat and a loaf of bread. In addition he could buy groceries at
the shop, but he did so rarely: out of the sixty liras deposited
at the administration (sent from America by his wife) he spent
less than ten. (Centini)
Even in Santo Stefano
Bresci showed a calm behavior, and accepted the visit of the prison
chaplain, Father Antonio Fasulo,
but only to get some books. He received a copy of the Bible, and
one of the “Lives of the Fathers”, which he did
not appreciate, and therefore also required the Cormon and Manni
French-Italian vocabulary, who was found open and crinkled in
his cell when his dead body was officially discovered. Bresci
also had at his disposal the monthly bulletin of the "Rivista
di disciplina carceraria" ("Prison Discipline
Journal"), conceived for the education of prisoners,
containing edifying, moral and patriotic tales, the fourth and
last book available in the small penitentiary library. (Zucca)
The death
The registry office
of Santo Stefano Royal Penitentiary recorded the death of prisoner
"Gaetano Bresci son of the late Gaspero, sentenced to
life imprisonment for the murder of the king of Italy at Monza".
Gaetano Bresci was thirty-two years old.
The gaoler Antonio Barbieri maintained he had found Gaetano Bresci
dead at 3:00 PM on Wednesday May 22nd, 1901, after ten months of imprisonment.
At 2:45 PM Barbieri had seen Bresci alive, reading close to the
cell window. According to the official version Bresci would have
strangled himself with a towel or a handkerchief (according to
two versions, both official), hanging to the window bars, dodging
the continuous peephole surveillance, while the watchman at 2:50PM
had been away for a few minutes for physical needs, and without
making any noise, despite having his feet locked in a long chain,
fastened to a cell wall, which clinked at the slightest movement
of the prisoner. The two guards Barbieri and De Maria were suspended
from the service.
The second jailer, Giovanni De Maria, according to the official
version was sleeping, and rushed at the call of Barbieri, together
with the detainee Leonardo Tamorria, a blacksmith from Partinico
(province of Palermo), who was free to go around inside the prison,
since he handled general services. From the prison register it
appears that the last inspection had been carried out at 9:30AM
and the last check of the bars at 1:10PM.
According to the Anarchist journal “Rivista
Anarchica” the first official version, which referred
to a towel, was changed, when it was learnt that inmates were
not allowed to keep towels in the cell, so they switched to a
handkerchief, which anyway had to be large enough to hang oneself.
Other versions refer to a tablecloth (nobody knows where it might
come from, since Bresci neither had a table in his cell), to a
necktie (it is unclear how a prisoner could get such a garment),
tied to the towel, or to the livery collar or the trousers of
the prison uniform cut into strips and knotted to make a rope.
It doesn't seem that these objects have been found in the cell,
on the contrary the prison doctor Francesco Russolillo, at the
first examination of the corpse noticed that he wore the uniform
with white and hazel stripes, and the pants were intact. Therefore
there's a strong and grounded suspect that Bresci was murdered,
maybe in a date previous to that officially declared.
The French weekly journal Le Petit Journal in a short
article on June 9th, 1901 issue attributed the suicide to the desperate
conditions of detention in isolation, and to solve the problem
of the dodging of surveillance, hypothesizes that the jailers
had voluntarily left Bresci to act, for humanitarian reasons,
allowing him to put an end to his suffering. Another French weekly
journal L'Assiette au beurre of June 6th,
1901 represents instead on its cover
the hanged corpse of Bresci watched by a guard, a priest and a
bourgeois wearing a top hat, and at the bottom of the page a comment
by Vittorio Emanuele III : " it's the best that could
happen ".
Gaetano Bresci, as usual, had left aside for dinner a part of
his daily food ration, that he received in the morning, a soup
without meat with vegetables and pasta, and some grey bread, which
does not make one think of a person on the point of committing
suicide.
The prison doctor, Francesco Russolillo, who reported seeing the
corpse of Bresci immediately after it was found, still with the
"rope" around his neck, tells the typical framework
of the death by strangulation. The anarchist Amilcare Cipriani,
in the past detained for eight years in the penitentiary, deemed
the hypothesis of suicide completely impossible, both for the
continuous surveillance and because no prisoner could have handkerchiefs,
towels or any other piece of cloth suitable for making a rope,
furthermore lacking a support to which it could be hooked.
Some coincidences, when confirmed, could strengthen the thesis
of a state murder: the Director General of Prisons Doria was promoted
two months after Bresci's death and would have profited a redoubling
of his salary (increasing from 4,500 to 9,500 liras a year). The
anarchist prisoner Ezio Taddei, reported the story of an old lifer,
according to which Bresci was strangled by an inmate, head-scullion
Sanna, who two days after Bresci's death, was transferred to Procida
and then freed by the grant of Sovereign Pardon, perhaps as a
reward for the homicide. (Galzerano, 2001, pag. 855)
The late President of the Italian Republic Sandro
Pertini, in a speech of November 19th,
1947 to the Constituent Assembly said: "... I speak for
personal experience (...). In jail, Honourable Minister, it happens
this: a prisoner is struck; in consequence of the blows the prisoner
dies, and then everybody worries, and not only the jailers who
stroke the prisoner worry, but also the director, the doctor,
the chaplain and all the prison crew do it. And then they make
this: they lay the prisoner bare, they hang him to the window's
grating and they let him be found hanging this way. The doctor
comes and draws up a medical report of suicide. This was the end
of Bresci. Bresci has been struck to death, then they hung his
corpse to the window's grating of his cell at Santo Stefano, where
I have been a year and half".
Ugoberto Alfassio Grimaldi, quoting testimonies of political prisoners,
writes of Bresci: "That May 22nd
three guards made him the "Santantonio": that is covering
somebody with blankets and sheets and then beating him until his
death; his corpse had been buried, in a place of which remained
no trace in Santo Stefano archives, by two lifers who were sent
purposely there from an other jail, and then immediately away;
the penitentiary's commander had been promoted and the three jailers
had been rewarded".
From the private documents of the former Prime Minister Francesco
Crispi, it seems that already on May 18th,
four days before the "official" date of the death, a
representative of the government was in Santo Stefano, the aforementioned
inspector Alessandro Doria. For this visit the prison manager
asked the ministry whether should he allow Doria to see Bresci.
Furthermore, on May 24th, two days after "official"
death, the doctors who performed post-mortem examination found
the body in an advanced stage of decomposition. According to the
testimony of an ex-jailer, Bresci was killed no less than fifteen
days before, on May 7th, so that a journalist who witnessed
his burial reported that the body had a strong rotting smell.
(Rivista
Anarchica; Galzerano, 2001, pag. 843)
The corpse of Bresci underwent post-mortem examination by four
medical examiners, including professor Corrado, holder of forensic
medicine chair at the University of Naples and doctors Gianturco
and De Crecchio. There is no trace left of the detailed report
drafted by the doctors. (Galzerano, 2001, pag. 818)
The Italian-American anarchist newspaper L'Aurora of June
8th, 1901 (supplement to No. 34) imagines (or
narrates?) that King Vittorio Emanuele III went incognito to Santo
Stefano to ask Bresci to account for the murder of his father
Umberto, that the anarchist's response had been disdainful, and
the prison guards strangled Bresci in his own cell (Galzerano, 2001,
pag. 845-848)
Gaetano Bresci shared
with other prisoners the fate of being murdered by those who had
to safeguard him. Among the others Costantino Quaglieri, murdered
in Regina Coeli jail in Rome in
1894 (see my webpage
on him), Romeo Frezzi, murdered in
San Michele a Ripa jail in Rome in
1897 (see my webpage on him),
the young Communist from Calabria Rocco
Pugliese, murdered like Bresci in Santo Stefano in 1930 (see
my webpage on him), and
the anarchic railwayman Giuseppe Pinelli,
thrown from a window of Milan central police station on December
16th, 1969, a hundred years and a month after
Gaetano Bresci's birth, and never
forgotten.
After
the murder
From the jail's register,
which described life and death of any prisoner, a page is missing,
bearing the number 515, corresponding to Bresci's matriculation
number. Even in the Central State Archive
in Rome nothing can be found about Bresci. According to Arrigo
Petacco (1929-2018), the author of a successful biography
of Bresci, even the contents of a file disappeared, which, between
the "secret papers" of the Prime Minister Giolitti,
included the unofficial documentation on Bresci's death.
Bresci's body was buried on May 26th, 1901 in Santo Stefano cemetary.
According to unofficial sources, all his things were thrown along
with him in the grave. According to other sources, instead, Bresci's
body was thrown in the sea how the Naples' newspaper Il Mattino
wished for in an editorial signed "Vagus".
(Galzerano,
2001, pag. 837)
The journalist and
gastronome Luigi Veronelli (1926-2004)
engaged himself in the quest of Bresci's grave, and drew a plan
of the cemetery's burials, starting from hints he found on the
graves, including those of the confinees of the fascist era, which,
like the most ancient ones, did not bear indications. In september
1964 Veronelli pinpointed a cross bearing a scroll: "Gaetano
Bresci 22 May, 1901" (ParmaDaily, Galzerano, 2001,
pag. 821).
Just a relic of the
anarchist's imprisonment was left, his prison cap: it was marked
with the number 515, and it was kept in the small penitentiary
museum together with the cap of another famous anarchist, Pietro
Acciarito, who also tried to kill Umberto in 1897. Both caps were
lost during a prisoners' riot broken out in Santo Stefano in November
1943.
In the Criminal
museum in Rome other objects
sequestrated to Bresci after his arrest are kept: the revolver
he used to kill king Umberto I, a camera, chemical baths for photographic
processing and two suitcases containing personal belongings.
Memory
On July 29th
of each year, starting from 1901,
the anarchists remembered Monza regicide and the figure of Gaetano
Bresci, with special issues of newspapers and booklets, produced
outside Italy, in areas where communities of Italian emigrants
settled, like the United States, Brazil, Argentina, France and
Switzerland. The publications, beyond being widespread locally,
were also sent or introduced illegally in Italy, addressed to
the anarchists of the native land.
Many of the commemorative texts had in common a feeling of disapproval
of the Italian people, who had not seized the opportunity of regicide
to rebel and overthrow an anti-popular and liberticide regime.
In honour of the anarchist from Prato the christian name of Bresci
Thompson (1908-2004) was given, an U.S: painter and sculptor born
in Manhattan and then moved to Chelsea.
On July 27th, 1947 the Lombard anarchist federation
organized a demonstration in memory of Gaetano Bresci at the Cinema
Astra in Monza, in via Manzoni (see the photo
of the current modern building which lies there) attended by a
thousand people. At the end a plaque
was discovered, amidst "a jubilation of anarchist flags",
a few tens of meters from the "Expiatory Chapel". The
following day the police headquarters in Milan removed and seized
the plaque. (link).
In 1971 the film critic and screenwriter Tullio
Kezich (1928-2009) published the theatrical work “W Bresci: storia italiana in due
tempi”, ("Hooray for Bresci: Italian history
in two acts"), defined by the author as "grotesque
psychodrama" which staged the historical events that
led to the regicide of Monza, from the rejoicing of the Savoy
court and the top military officials for the repression of the
Milan riots to the echoes of a possible coup promoted by the same
circles of the court and the ruling classes, to the slavishness
of the press and of a theatrical company trying to stage the regicide,
without upsetting the censorship, at the trial which lasted a
day without leaving any chance to the defense. Kezich describes
Vittorio Emanuele III as an opportunist who tries not to end up
like his father with a wary and less violent policy, in contrast
with his mother Margherita, advocate of a reactionary response.
Kezich comes to the conclusion that all kings must be killed in
people's hearts and minds, eradicating the faith in the principle
of authority.
In 2002, on the occasion of the return to Italy of the male members
of the Savoia family, after the removal of the ban provided for
by the Italian Constitution, in Prato a writing appeared on a
wall: "The Savoya are coming back ... Gaetano's comrades
… too" (Borsini).
On July 29th, 2004, in the 104th
anniversary of the regicide, the Turin anarchists covered
Umberto's monument up, lying on Superga hill, in Turin, and affixed
a plaque in memory of Gaetano Bresci.
In the city of Carrara, heart of Italian anarchism, on May 2nd,
1988 a monument to Bresci was
inaugurated, made by the artist Sergio Signori. The work, unfinished
for the death of the artist, rises in Turigliano, in the gardens
in front of the cemetery, dedicated
to Gaetano Bresci, and was made under commission of the anarchist
craftsman Ugo Mazzucchelli.
Several actors and musicians have remembered the sacrifice of
Gaetano Bresci (see the links at the bottom of the page).
In close proximity of the Royal Expiatory Chapel built in Monza
on the exact place of the regicide, two graffiti celebrating Bresci
can be seen, one on the access lane
and one on the enclosure wall.
Currently it seems that only one
road has been dedicated to
Gaetano Bresci in Italy, exactly in Prato, his birthplace,
not far from Coiano, the hamlet in which his native home lies.
The city council of Prato led by the mayor Lohengrin Landini on
July 1st, 1976, decided to name a street
after Bresci: “it seems worthy of mention for reasons
related to the Italian history of the early twentieth century
and the meaning that in this context assumes the figure of this
Prato citizen" and furthermore: "In a historical
evaluation, his memory relies on the recognition that the act
he performed led to a turning point in Italian politics in the
social field, after the bloody and reactionary repressions that
had followed the African war and the riots of 1898".
The resolution was unanimously voted by the 38 participating councilors
(Mazzone). Conversely in Prato, no street
has been dedicated to the kings or other members of the House
of Savoia (Santin
and Riccomini).
On the island of Ventotene, the breakwater that protects the new
harbour is covered with murals, among which two represent Gaetano
Bresci, one with the sentence:
"I only appeal to the forthcoming Revolution"
pronounced by the anarchist during the trial, and the the
other facing the nearby island of Santo Stefano.
Bibliographic
reference:
-
AFFORTUNATI Alessandro (2015) Fedeli alle libere idee : il movimento
anarchico pratese dalle origini alla Resistenza. Zero in condotta,
Milano,
- ALFASSIO GRIMALDI Ugoberto (1970) Il re "buono". Feltrinelli,
Milan, Italy. p. 468-470.
- ANATRA Bruno (1972) Voce "Bresci Gaetano" In
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 14. link
- ANGIOLINI
Alfredo (1899-1900) Socialismo e socialisti in Italia. G. Nerbini,
Firenze.
- ANSALDO Giovanni (2010) Gli anarchici della Belle Époque.
Le Lettere, Firenze.
- ARUFFO Alessandro (2010) Gli anarchici italiani 1870-1970. Datanews,
Roma.
- BENTHAM Jeremy (1787) Panopticon, or the Inspection-house.
link
- BORSINI Edoardo (2006) Obiettivo “il re buono”. Microstoria
n- 8 n. 45 (gennaio- febbraio 2006) p 18-19.
- CECCHINI Bianca Maria (2011) Il re, l'assassino. L'Italia dal
1861 al regicidio di Umberto I di Savoia. Sala delle Conferenze
della Croce Verde., Pietrasanta, Lucca, Italy link
- CENTINI Massimo (2009) Come gli altruisti divennero terroristi.
Gli anarchici secondo Lombroso. Storia in Rete, January 2009:
54-55 link
- CERRITO Gino (1977) Dall'insurrezionalismo alla settimana rossa
: per una storia dell'anarchismo in Italia, 1881-1914. Crescita
politica, Firenze.
- CIPRIANI Amilcare (1900) Bresci e Savoia : il regicidio. Tipografia
della Questione sociale, Paterson, N.J., USA.
- DA PASSANO Mario (2005) Il «delitto di Regina Cœli».
Diritto e Storia, n.4 - In memoriam - Da Passano link
- DE JACO Aldo (editor) (1971) Gli anarchici. Cronaca inedita
dell’Unità d’Italia. Editori Riuniti, Roma.
- DEL CARRIA Renzo (1977) Proletari senza rivoluzione - vol.II
(1892-1914). Savelli, Rome, Italy. p.138.
- DELL'ERBA Nunzio (1983) Giornali e gruppi anarchici in Italia
: (1892-1900). Franco Angeli Editore, Milano.
- E.B. (1971) 29 luglio 1900. Rivista anarchica, anno
1 nr. 6 Summer 1971 link
- FASANELLA
Giovanni, GRIPPO Antonella (2012) Intrighi d'Italia. Sperling
& Kupfer, Milan, Italy, p. 161-187.
- FELDBAUER Sergio (1969) Attentati anarchici dell'ottocento.
Mondadori, Milano.
- FELISATTI Massimo (1975) Un delitto della polizia? Morte dell’anarchico
Romeo Frezzi, Bompiani,Milan, Italy,
- FERRARIS Luigi Vittorio (1968) L’assassinio di Umberto
I e gli anarchici di Paterson. Rassegna storica del Risorgimento,
LV (1968) p. 47-64.
- FIORELLI Dino (1976) Fermenti popolari e classe dirigente a
Prato: dalla caduta di Crispi all'armistizio del 1918. Bechi,
Prato, p 27-36.
- FONTANA Carlo (1971) Perché venne inscenato il “suicidio”
di Bresci. (intervista a U. Alfassio Grimaldi). Avanti,
13/03/1971, p. 3.
- GALZERANO Giuseppe (2001) Gaetano Bresci : la vita, l'attentato,
il processo e la morte del regicida anarchico. Galzerano editore
-Atti e memorie del popolo - Casalvelino Scalo - Salerno, Italy.
phone/fax: +39.0974.62028 e-mail: galzeranoeditore@tiscali.it
-
GALZERANO Giuseppe (2013) Gaetanina, la figlia del regicida. Il
Manifesto, 28/9/2013 link
- GIULIETTI Fabrizio (2017) Storia degli anarchici italiani in
età giolittiana. Angeli, Milano.
- GIUSTI Nazareno (2010) L'anarchico Bresci e Ponte all'Ania.
Il Giornale di Barga e della Valle del Serchio, 28/06/2010.
link
- GRUPPI ANARCHICI RIUNITI (G.A.R.) (1981) 29 luglio 1900. La
Cooperativa Tipolitografica, Carrara.
- HUNT Thomas (2016) Wrongly Executed? - The Long-forgotten Context
of Charles Sberna's 1939 Electrocution. Seven.Seven.Eight,
Whiting, Vermont, USA.
- KEZICH Tullio (1977) W Bresci: storia italiana in due
tempi. Bulzoni, Roma.
- LISANTI Francesco (2014) Apologia di Gaetano Bresci. Booktime,
Milano.
- LOMBARDO Mario (1974) in "Colloqui coi lettori" -
Storia Illustrata n. 194 - January 1974, p. 6
- MACIOCCO Giovanna Patrizia (2004) "Ill.mo Signor Sindaco
e Componenti il Consiglio Comunale .." Alfabetismo e scolarità
tra domanda privata e offerta pubblica: Prato, 1841-1911. Tesi
di dottorato di ricerca in storia, Istituto Universitario Europeo,
Firenze. Dipartimento di Storia e Civilizzazione Anno accademico
2003 - 2004, 15 ottobre 2004. link
- MARIANI Giuseppe (1954) Nel mondo degli ergastoli, S.n.,
Turin, Italy
- MARZI Paolo (2016) Gaetano Bresci, un regicida nella Valle del
Serchio. paolomarzi.blogspot.com, November 1st, 2016. link
- MASINI Pier Carlo (1981) Storia degli anarchici italiani nell'epoca
degli attentati. Rizzoli, Milano.
- MAZZONE Stefania (2018) Seta e anarchia: teorie e prassi degli
anarchici italiani a Paterson. Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli.
- MEONI Alessandro (1969) Uno che passerà alla storia.
”Prato, Storia e Arte”, n. 26, dicembre 1969,
p. 7-22.
- MONTANARI Fabrizio (2013) Ernestina e Gaetano Bresci. 24Emilia,
link
- MOUY (Vicomte de) Roger (1901) La mort de Bresci à Santo-Stefano.
L'illustration, 3041, 8 Juin 1901, p. 371
- ORTALLI Massimo (2011) Gaetano Bresci, tessitore, anarchico
e uccisore di re. Nova Delphi, Roma.
- PASI Paolo (2017) Ho ucciso un principio. Eléuthera,
Milano.
- PERTINI Sandro (1947) in "Atti dell’Assemblea Costituente.
Discussioni", IX, November 19th, 1947, 2179-2180.
- PETACCO Arrigo (2001) L'anarchico che venne dall'America. Mondadori,
Milan, Italy.
- PETACCO Arrigo (1973) "I terroristi fanno tremare i re"
- Storia Illustrata n. 191 - October 1973, p. 64.
- POGGI Roberto (2018) Gaetano Bresci e l'inafferrabile "biondino".
Storia in Network. part 1 link. part 2 link.
- PUGLIESE Amelia (?) Viaggio nella casa di correzione penale
di Santo Stefano. http://www.ventotenet.org/tourinfo/santostefano.htm and http://www.ecn.org/filiarmonici/santostefano.html..
- RICCOMINI Marco (1983) Gaetano Bresci. Il tessitore anarchico.
”Prato, Storia e Arte”, n. 24, n. 63 dicembre
1983 p 33-35
- ROSADA Maria Grazia (1975) Gaetano Bresci. In “Il movimento
operaio italiano” edited by Franco Andreucci and Tommaso
Detti vol I A-Cec Editori riuniti, Rome, p 400-402.
- SACCHETTI Giorgio (2000) 29 luglio 1900 Gaetano Bresci da Coiano.
Microstoria, n. 2 n.12 (giugno-luglio 2000) p 10-11.
- SANTIN Fabio, RICCOMINI Marco (2006) Gaetano Bresci: un tessitore
anarchico. Mir edizioni, Montespertoli.
- SCERESINI Andrea (2020) Il mio album di famiglia con regicida.
La Repubblica, June 3rd, 2020, p. 30-31.
- SILIPO Cesare Gildo (1998) Un re: Umberto, un generale: Bava
Beccaris Fiorenzo, un anarchico: Gaetano Bresci. Il Centro
della copia, Milano.
- TOGLIATTI Palmiro (1922) Due date. Il comunista, 17 agosto
1922. In Palmiro Togliatti – Opere – a cura di Ernesto
Ragionieri – vol I – 1917-1926 Editori Riuniti, Roma,
1974, pp 399-402.
- TOSCANO Alfonso () Chi fu il terrore della "mano nera"
? link
- VAGHEGGI Paolo (1990) A Gaetano Bresci, gli anarchici'. In piazza
la statua contestata. La Repubblica, May 4th, 1990, sez. Cronaca,
p. 21.
- VALERA Paolo (1966). I cannoni di Bava Beccaris. Giordano,
Milano.
- VALERA Paolo (2010) L’assalto al convento. Il Muro di
Tessa, Milano.
- VENZA Claudio (1986) Appunti storici sul gesto di Gaetano Bresci.
Atti del convegno L'Italia umbertina, Carrara, 10 giugno 1985.
Comitato pro Bresci, Carrara, p 45-53
- VETTORI Giuseppe (a cura di) (1974) Canzoni italiane di protesta
- Newton Compton - Rome, Italy,. p. 350..
- ZUCCA Gian Domenico (2001) Appunti per una biografia su Gaetano
Bresci a cento anni dalla morte. Fondazione Biblioteca Archivio
Luigi Micheletti, Brescia, Italy link
Websites
visited:
Federazione
Anarchica Italiana (F.A.I.) http://www.federazioneanarchica.org/
Biblioteca
Franco Serantini - collezioni digitali - Gaetano Bresci http://www.bfscollezionidigitali.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/145
Biblioteca
Franco Serantini - collezioni digitali - Luigi Granotti http://bfscollezionidigitali.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/951
Ministero della Giustizia, Museo Criminologico, Roma http://www.museocriminologico.it/index.php/documenti2/2-non-categorizzato/76-gaetano-bresci
Spunk Library,
on-line anarchist library and archive http://www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/ran/sp001769.html
Senato della
Repubblica (Italian Senate)- digital library - Avanti! http://avanti.senato.it/avanti/controller.php?page=archivio-pubblicazione
Digital newspaper
library of the National Central Library of Rome http://digitale.bnc.roma.sbn.it/tecadigitale/emeroteca/explore
Digital library
of the Library of Modern and Contemporary History in Rome http://digiteca.bsmc.it/#
Bibliothèque
nationale de France - BNF Gallica (L'Assiette au beurre)
https://gallica.bnf.fr
Archivio
Storico del Senato della Repubblica - I Senatori d'Italia - Senatori
del Regno (1848-1943) http://notes9.senato.it/web/senregno.nsf/SenatoriTutti?OpenPage
Terre Protette
- tour operator, Roma http://www.terreprotette.it/tp2/106
Provincia
di Prato. Servizio Sistemi informativi - Ufficio SIT - Nome Scheda:
Casa del Bresci - Numero scheda: 543 Compilatore: sc / Paola Donatucci
link
Parma Daily
- 29 luglio 1900: Gaetano Bresci uccide Umberto I di Savoia -
29 luglio 2017 http://www.parmadaily.it/308607/29-luglio-1900-gaetano-bresci-uccide-umberto-savoia/
Wikipedia,
page on Gaetano Bresci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaetano_Bresci
Websites
visited but currently not available (update to January 14th, 2022):
Website
www.ventotene.it http://www.ventotene.it/itinerari/carcere.htm
Spartacus
Educational, United Kingdom http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbresci.htm
Archive of
Metaforum.it, Forum of politics, culture, society http://www.metaforum.it/archivio/2004/index15b6.html?t4428.html
Istoreco
(Istituto per la storia della Resistenza e della societá
contemporanea in Provincia di Reggio Emilia) http://www.istoreco-re.it/isto/default.asp?id=326&lang=ITA
Marcello
Botarelli, photographer http://www.marcellobotarelli.it/santostefano/index.htm
Anarchist
Archives http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/
Traveleurope
http://www.traveleurope.it/ventoten.htm
Books on Gaetano Bresci:
Songs and theatre about Gaetano Bresci:
page
created: September
21st, 2008 and last updated: November 9th, 2023
