Gaetano Bresci

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Gaetano Bresci was born on 11 November 1869 into a lower middle-class family in Prato, Tuscany, the son of Gaspero Bresci and Maddalena Godi. After the Kingdom of Italy began importing cheap grain in 1880, the family fell into poverty and at age 11 Bresci began an apprenticeship as a weaver. His experience of exploitation in the workplace radicalized him, and he joined the Italian anarchist movement. On 3 October 1892, Bresci and a group of about twenty anarchists confronted two police officers; he was later arrested and on 27 December 1892 found guilty of insulting the police, sentenced to 15 days in prison. He was arrested again in 1895 for organising a textile workers' strike and exiled to Lampedusa, where he studied anarchist literature. After amnesty in 1896, he emigrated to the United States in 1897, settling in Paterson, New Jersey, where he became involved with Italian immigrant anarchists, co-founded and financially supported the newspaper *La Questione Sociale*, and contributed as a prolific firebrand writer. News of the Bava Beccaris massacre — in which protests in Milan against the rising price of bread were violently suppressed by the Royal Italian Army, which fired on and killed many protestors, and King Umberto I awarded a medal to General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris — motivated Bresci to return to Italy to assassinate the king. He requested that *La Questione Sociale* return $150 he had lent them, bought a Harrington & Richardson revolver in .32 or .38 S&W for $7 and a one-way ticket to Europe for $27, and sailed in May 1900. Local police in Prato knew of his return but did not follow procedure to inform the Ministry of the Interior or retain his passport. On 29 July 1900, during the king's appearance in Monza amid a sparse police presence, Bresci shot Umberto three or four times. He accepted arrest without resistance, declaring: 'I did not kill Umberto. I have killed the King. I killed a principle.'

Bresci was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment in a single day on 30 August 1900. He was confined on Santo Stefano Island in Latina, Lazio, where he was found dead of an apparent suicide within the year. After his death, Italian anarchists erected a monument to Bresci in Carrara despite governmental attempts to block it.

Reader's Guide

Gaetano Bresci's assassination of King Umberto I was a direct act of propaganda by deed, motivated by the Bava Beccaris massacre. His action highlighted tensions between the Italian state and anarchist movements; the government of Italy suspected a conspiracy but no evidence was found to indicate that others were involved. Bresci's martyrdom within the Italian anarchist movement reinforced the symbolic power of regicide as a political tool. His act directly inspired Leon Czolgosz's assassination of United States President William McKinley. Bresci's life illustrates the radicalization of workers through economic exploitation and state repression: he came to blame the Italian state for his family's poverty, was radicalized by workplace exploitation, and after his death gained the status of a martyr within the Italian anarchist movement, who defended his regicidal act. His legacy remains controversial, celebrated by some anarchists as a revolutionary act and condemned by others as terrorism.

Did You Know?

• Bresci saved the life of Errico Malatesta by disarming a disgruntled individualist anarchist who had shot and wounded Malatesta at a meeting in Paterson.
• Before leaving the United States, Bresci told his wife he was returning to Italy to resolve his deceased parents' estate.
• On the day of the assassination, Bresci told a stranger he had lunch with, 'Look at me carefully, because you will perhaps remember me for the rest of your life.'
• The Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso examined Bresci and found no evidence of mental illness.
• Italian anarchists erected a monument to Bresci in Carrara despite governmental attempts to block it.