King Umberto I was shot dead at Monza on 29 July 1900
On this day · 29 July 1900
An anarchist weaver back from New Jersey killed Italy's king in revenge for Milan's 1898 massacre — after two earlier attempts on his life had failed.
King Umberto I of Italy was shot dead at Monza on the evening of 29 July 1900 by Gaetano Bresci, an anarchist silk weaver who had come back from Paterson, New Jersey, intending to kill him. The king had been presenting prizes at a gymnastics contest run by the local society Forti e Liberi and was in his open carriage when Bresci fired from a few paces away in the crowd.
How many shots, and at what time, depends on which account you read. Italy’s standard national biography has given both answers:
| Account | Time | Shots |
|---|---|---|
| Dizionario Biografico, Bresci entry (1972) | 20:20 | three |
| Dizionario Biografico, Umberto I entry (2020) | about 22:30 | four |
| Comune di Monza (2020) | 22:35 | four |
The newer scholarship and the city agree: four revolver shots, late in the evening.
Bresci was not the first to try. On 17 November 1878 Giovanni Passannante, a 29-year-old from Basilicata, tried to stab the king with a dagger in Naples, and on 22 April 1897 a lone attacker, Pietro Acciarito, struck at him again; Acciarito was jailed for life.
Bresci’s motive was Milan in May 1898, when General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris turned rifles and even artillery on protesters against bread prices. The toll was never precisely established; the Dizionario Biografico puts it at several hundred. Umberto then gave the general the Grand Officer’s Cross of the Military Order of Savoy.
The trial took one day, from 9am to 6pm on 29 August 1900 in Milan, and ended in a life sentence; its records can no longer be found in Milan’s State Archive. On 22 May 1901 Bresci was found dead in his cell on Santo Stefano, officially by hanging. His shots came amid a wave of anarchist assassinations: Empress Elisabeth of Austria had been stabbed in 1898, and President McKinley would be shot in 1901, in an age of anarchist fear that reached back to the Haymarket affair in Chicago.
The spot is marked today by the Cappella Espiatoria, completed in 1910. Its crypt holds a black marble marker dated 29 July 1900. It is a memorial, not the king’s tomb.
Sources & references
5 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 3 independent sources.
