Gaetano Bresci

Gaetano Bresci
Born	10 November 1869(1869-11-10) Coiano, Prato, Tuscany
Died	22 May 1901(1901-05-22) (aged 31) Santo Stefano Island, Ventotene, Latina, Lazio
Conviction(s)	Murder of Umberto I
Penalty	Life imprisonment
Status	dead
Occupation	weaver

Gaetano Bresci (Italian pronunciation: [ɡaeˈtano ˈbrɛʃi]; November 10, 1869 – May 22, 1901) was an Italian American anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy. Bresci was the first European regicide not to be executed, as capital punishment in Italy had been abolished since 1889.

Militancy

Bresci was born at Coiano, near Prato, Tuscany, and emigrated from Italy to the United States, making his living as a weaver in Paterson, New Jersey, which had a large Italian-American community. He was one of the founders of La Questione Sociale, the Italian language anarchist paper published in Paterson. According to Emma Goldman:

he was a skillful weaver, considered by his employers as a sober, hard-working man, but his pay averaged only fifteen dollars a week. He had a wife and child to support; yet he managed to donate weekly contributions to the paper. He had even saved a hundred and fifty dollars, which he lent to the group at a critical period of La Questione Sociale. His free evenings and Sundays he used to spend in helping with the office work and in propaganda. He was beloved and respected for his devotion by all the members of his group.

In 1898, high bread prices led to demonstrations all over Italy. In Milan, an unarmed crowd of protestors marched toward the palace, which was surrounded by a strong military carabinieri force under command of General Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris. The people ignored the order to disperse, whereupon the General gave the signal to fire with muskets and cannons, resulting in a massacre of the demonstrators. More than ninety people died.

Gaetano Bresci during his trial

Umberto I's killing

King Umberto later decorated Bava-Beccaris, complimenting him upon his "brave defense of the royal house" — as a result of which Bresci became determined to kill the king. Bresci had his loan to the paper returned (without telling his comrades why), and with the money he went to Italy. In Monza, where the king was visiting on July 29, 1900, he shot him four times with a five-shot .32 revolver. Bresci was captured and put on trial, where he was defended by the anarchist lawyer Francesco Saverio Merlino. There being no capital punishment in Italy at the time, he was sentenced in Milan on August 29, 1900, to penal servitude for life on Santo Stefano Island near Ventotene, where numerous other anarchists had also been sent over the years. Less than a year later he was found dead in prison. It is not clear whether he committed suicide, as officially announced, or whether he was murdered by his guards.

Trivia

• Bresci was born 10 November 1869, the day before his victim's son and heir Victor Emmanuel III was born
• The city of Carrara dedicated a marble monument to Bresci.
• The city of Prato named a street for him in 1976.
• Bresci had a custom of always carrying an expensive camera, even on the day he committed regicide.
• Bresci differed from "normal italo-americans" in his deep knowledge of English, for his camera (a luxury at the time) and for his good relations with American community.
• Bresci was a "womanizer", very free and easy with the girls, and assisted in this by a discreet culture.
• Bresci had a daughter named Gaetanina (a convinced anarchist who, after the death of her father, continued what she called her father's struggle for a better life for workers).
• Ascanio Celestini dedicated a song to Bresci about a murderess who enters "like a thief in the house of the thief" (that is, the owner) to kill him. This piece of music was revived during the 1° May Concert concert in Piazza San Giovanni Laterano in Rome.

External links

• Gaetano Bresci Page in the Anarchist Encyclopedia