King Umberto I, Remember

On this day in 1900, King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated by an anarchist. During his reign, the Kingdom of Italy had secured alliances with major powers and first expanded overseas in East Africa. He fought in the Italian Wars for Independence, helping make Italy a free and united nation. His life and times should not be forgotten.

King Umberto I Portraits

A Word on King Umberto I

It was on this day in 1900 that His Majesty King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated by an anarchist in Monza. It was a cruel and tragic fate for a man known as "the Good" King. His murderer was the Italian-American Gaetano Bresci who said it was done in retaliation for the so-called Bava-Beccaris massacre in Milan in 1898. For those who don't know, there are many claims and counter-claims and accusations about that event but the bottom line is that there were protests which turned to widespread rioting, endangering lives and property, and all of it pushed by the radical socialists. The government sent in the army to restore order under General Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris who ended the rioting by having his troops fire on the crowd. When King Umberto I later decorated the general for his service to Italy and the House of Savoy this so infuriated Bresci that he immediately left America to return to Italy for the sole purpose of murdering the monarch. Despite the horror of the assassination, many have tried to generate sympathy for the murderer by slandering King Umberto over what happened in Milan. This is not only dishonest, it is grossly hypocritical in most cases.

In the first place, it is dishonest because the King, if he overreacted, did so on the basis of false information. He was being given reports of a revolution, not simply in Milan but threatening the whole country with partisan bands gathering at the Swiss border to launch a major attack on his country. What would any other leader have done in his place with those same reports? Biased sources make it sound as though the army went in with the intention to harm helpless, innocent people, something which really should be considered too ridiculous to take seriously. However, there were in fact many traitors, many republican socialists who were arrested. One of the republican socialists there at that time was none other than a young Benito Mussolini. This is where the hypocritical element comes into play. I am always astounded by those who so vociferously condemn the strict measures taken in response to the socialist riots at Milan, blaming it all on King Umberto I, yet these very same people are also the ones who usually condemn his son and heir King Vittorio Emanuele III for not declaring a state of siege and sending in the army during the "March on Rome" by the Fascist Blackshirts in 1922. One King is condemned for setting the army on "the people" while another King is condemned for not doing exactly that!

I have often wondered (and we can never know) if the memory of how his father was treated over using the army in Milan was going through the mind of Vittorio Emanuele III when he struggled to deal with the Fascists marching on Rome. If a state of siege had been declared, and the army sent in, how many people would have been killed? Would the chattering class feel the same outrage as they did over the events of 1898? I cannot help but wonder. The problem is that, when it comes to public disorders, one never knows how they are going to work out. Some come to nothing while others can grow larger and larger until the entire country is ruined. One thing is certain. Anyone who knows the facts about the life and character of King Umberto I should know that he would never do anything to intentionally harm his people. This was the King who spared the life of the man who tried to murder him shortly after coming to the throne, the King who went in person and gave from his own private funds to help those displaced by the floods in Verona and Venice in 1882 and the man who saved many lives after the earthquake in 1883 by ordering rescue operations to continue five days longer after others said all hope was lost. This was the King who gave generously to help the victims of the cholera epidemic in the south in 1884 and this was the King who, privately, without public notice, paid the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II in the aftermath of Adowa to buy the freedom of the Italian soldiers being held captive.

Umberto I was a "good" King, there should be no doubt, who did the best he could in all circumstances. His assassination was a tragedy for Italy and for the world as well as it was part of a trend of anarchist assassinations. Even for the United States as it was the regicide of Umberto I which inspired the anarchist assassination of U.S. President William McKinley the following year. Additionally, if he is to be criticized for using the troops in Milan in 1898, Vittorio Emanuele III should not be so criticized for not taking the same action in Rome in 1922.

Today in Italian Royal History

Umberto I, "the Good" became King of Italy. Under his reign the Kingdom of Italy was consolidated, Italy joined the "Triple Alliance" with Germany and Austria and Italian power expanded beyond her shores to the first Italian colony in Eritrea.

King Umberto I, Flag Photos

King Umberto I

The man who would become the second King of the united Italy was born HRH Prince Umberto Ranieri Carlo Emanuele Giovanni Maria Ferdinando Eugenio di Savoia on March 14, 1844 in Turin to HM King Victor Emanuel II and Queen Adelaide of Austria. It would be enough to judge him by the extent to which the ordinary Italian people loved him and how the radical leftists despised him, but the reasons for these positions reveal a man who was a committed constitutional monarch but who also saw that as no limitation to his desire to see the Kingdom of Italy achieve greatness. As a boy he was given the best education possible by some of the most respected scholars in Italy at the time. Yet, like all royals of the House of Savoy in those days, he was expected to have a military career and do his part to win greater glory for his dynasty and the Italian nation that was then still forming.

Toward that end the young Prince Umberto served as a captain in the army of Piedmont-Sardinia (the highest rated amongst the Italian states) in the Italian Wars for Independence. Promotions followed and he fought at the battle of Solferino in 1859 and led a division at the battle of Custoza in 1866. That engagement was a bitter blow for the Piedmontese, being defeated by a significantly smaller Austrian army, however, Prince Umberto acquitted himself well. Near Villafranca, he and his men were attacked by the Austrian cavalry (which was famous across Europe) and the Prince had his men form square and repelled every charge with the Prince himself remaining with his troops at all times, exposed to constant danger. In the aftermath of the battle, he helped to form the rear-guard, covering the retreat of the Piedmontese army and won numerous decorations for his courage and gallantry.

Not long after, Prince Umberto, or rather his parents, began searching for a suitable wife for him, but this was not an easy process. The rulers of the princely states of Italy were not happy with the House of Savoy for leading the campaign for unification, nor were their Spanish, French or Austrian relatives. The conflict with the Pope, known as the “Roman Question”, also made other Catholic royal houses uneasy about a marital alliance with the heir to the Savoy throne. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the dynasty was being totally ‘blackballed’ as there were some princesses who were considered. An Austrian archduchess was set to be the chosen one but she burned to death in a rather horrible accident while trying to hide a forbidden cigarette she had been smoking. So, on April 21, 1868 Prince Umberto married his first cousin, Princess Margherita Teresa Giovanna of Savoy. The two had a very happy marriage and by the next year the princess gave birth to their first and only child, fortunately a boy, the future King Victor Emanuel III.

Prince Umberto, like his father before him and his son after him, had it impressed upon him at an early age that his duty was to make Italy a great nation and to lead the Italian people to a place of prosperity and greatness befitting their glorious ancient history. The House of Savoy had embraced enemies, alienated friends and risked all in this one mission; to see the unification of Italy and to make the Italian nation a great and powerful kingdom. Prince Umberto would never forget this and his duty to his people and his country always came first. His father had succeeded in the first step, uniting the country and becoming the first King of Italy, and it would be up to Prince Umberto to carry on that legacy and take the nation his father had given him to greater heights. This was firmly in his mind when his father died and he became King Umberto I of Italy on January 9, 1878. Whereas his father had not changed his name when he became King, Umberto specifically chose to reign as King Umberto I rather than “King Umberto IV” using the older Savoy numbering. He did not want to appear as a Piedmontese monarch ruling Italy but as the first King Umberto of an Italian kingdom with a new Italian Royal Family.

Also to further this ideal, as one of his first acts, King Umberto I undertook, along with his prime minister, a tour of the Italian peninsula. Despite the controversy associated with unification he was well received. Even in Naples, large crowds turned out to cheer for him. However, during a parade he was attacked by an anarchist. The King drew his sword and fended off the would-be assassin who was later sentenced to death. However, King Umberto commuted this to life at hard labor and the man later died in a mental hospital. This earned the King greater popularity as did his solemn commemoration of the death of Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1882. Garibaldi had been greatly romanticized and celebrated as a nationalist but he had fallen out with the royal house somewhat over his revolutionary republicanism. Nevertheless, the King gained a wider base of support for honoring the memory of the man who had played such a significant role in Italian history.

King Umberto I became known as the “Good King” or “Umberto the Good” by the common people because of the care and concern he showed them. When Verona and Venice suffered massive flooding in 1882 the King went himself to direct the efforts to minimize the disaster and gave generously from his own funds to aid those displaced. When a massive earthquake struck Ischia the following year the King again intervened, ordering rescue operations to continue five days longer than planned which resulted in many lives being saved. Again, he went himself to lend a hand even though the area remained quite dangerous. He showed similar compassion in 1884 when a cholera epidemic struck southern Italy and by all of these and similar actions was beloved by the Italian people. In securing the dynasty and uniting the country, the reign of Umberto I was an early success. The only ones not satisfied were the radical leftists who opposed the rise to prominence of more conservative elements in government, the most notable being Francesco Crispi.

In the area of foreign affairs, like Prime Minister Crispi, King Umberto favored colonial expansion and it was under his reign that the first foothold was made for what became the Italian colonial empire, eventually encompassing Eritrea, Somalia and (under his son) Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. King Umberto took Italy into the Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria, which was met with skepticism by those who still regarded the Austrians as their natural enemies since the wars for independence. He visited Vienna and Berlin but was also careful to maintain the good relations the Savoy had long maintained with Great Britain. In fact, the King considered the Triple Alliance only half effective so long as Italy lacked a naval alliance with Great Britain. However, this string of foreign policy successes came to an end with the disastrous defeat of the Italian colonial army at Adowa, Ethiopia in 1896 in a war over a disagreement concerning a treaty that agreed to Ethiopia being an Italian protectorate. This led to opposition to the war and colonial expansion in general which was hyped by the radical socialists who had always opposed the drive toward empire anyway.

In 1897 the King survived another assassination attempt, by another anarchist, near Rome. The following year came the one most controversial event of his reign. Riots, first over the price of bread but whipped up by leftist agitators, broke out in Milan and the city was placed under martial law. As the situation began to get out of control, General Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris ordered his artillery to fire on the crowd, killing about a hundred people and wounding many more but putting an immediate stop to the rioting. Many were shocked by this and many people (mostly revolutionaries anyway) were outraged when King Umberto I decorated the general afterwards. This incident has been used to paint the King in a very negative light and it was an unfortunate incident undoubtedly. However, the King only recognized the general for taking decisive action to restore law and order and safeguard lives and property against the already violent crowd of rioters in the streets. It was not an award for butchery but for putting a swift end to an ugly situation that was threatening to become worse. The Socialist Party had been behind the outbreak of violence which included, incidentally, a young radical named Benito Mussolini.

Nonetheless, if the King was unpopular with the radical leftists and socialists before, this incident made them absolutely despise him. However, this was not the only case by which many have misjudged the second King of Italy. Another was his policy of no-compromise regarding the “Roman Question” as the standoff with the Holy See was called. The King, in 1886, famously affirmed that Rome was the capitol of Italy and would always remain so and never return to clerical rule. King Umberto was, however, no anti-clerical and in the end the Church came to accept secular rule for the Eternal City. After the Italian army had occupied Rome in 1870 the Pope had been offered royal honors, sovereign status and rule over the whole of the Leonine City but this was rejected. Catholicism was always maintained as the state religion of Italy and, as we know, in the end an accommodation was reached to the satisfaction of the Holy See even though the territory on offer was reduced only to the Vatican. The King also became more and more religious throughout his life and was always charitable, though not many know it, as he helped others privately without any fuss or fanfare.


In 1900, in what would be the last major foreign policy act of his reign, King Umberto dispatched Italian troops to China as part of the Eight Nation Alliance to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. The Kingdom of Italy would gain a concession in China as a result but Umberto I would never know this. On July 29, 1900 King “Umberto the Good” was driving in Monza when he was shot four times and killed by an Italian-American anarchist named Gaetano Bresci, an act of revenge, the man claimed for the suppression of the riot in Milan. The public mourned heavily for the King they remembered fondly for his good humor and generosity. On August 9, 1900 he was laid to rest in the Pantheon in Rome next to his father.