29th July 1900 2010 W BRESCI W L'ANARCHIA

Gaetano Bresci killed at Monza, on the evening of Sunday, July 29, 1900, firing three shots (or four historical sources disagree) King Umberto I of Savoy. The king was returning to coach at his residence Monza after a ceremony in a sports club. The murder - immortalized in a famous painter Achille Beltrame table for "Domenica del Corriere" - took place under the eyes of people cheering that greeted the monarch. Bresci left captured without resistance.
[Edit] The trial, conviction and death
The trial of Bresci was educated in a very short time. On August 29, 1900, that is exactly one month after the murder, Bresci appeared in the court of Assizes in Milan Piazza Beccaria. The ruling was a foregone conclusion at the outset. Gaetano Bresci asked how the socialist deputy defender Filippo Turati, but he had declined the post and was replaced Advocate anarchist Francesco Saverio Merlino.
The defendant maintained an attitude in accordance with the character represented. Cold and detached, almost serene, listened to the reading of the indictment (for rhetorical truth up to capacity) without showing neither remorse nor bravado.

Here is the text of his interrogation in the classroom:

President: "The defendant has something to add to his deposition just read?"
Brescia: "The fact I made by myself, without accomplices. Thought I was seeing so much misery and many persecuted. You have to go abroad to see how they are treated the Italians! We have nicknamed "pigs" ... "
President 'not digress ... "
Bresci: "If I'm not talking sit down."
President: "Stay in the theme."
Bresci: "Well, I will say that the sentence leaves me indifferent, I'm not interested in point and I am sure I did not wrong to do what I did. Not even intend to appeal. I appeal only to the next proletarian revolution. "
President: "Admit that you have killed the king?


Bresci: "Do not killed Umberto; i killed a King, I killed a principle! And the crime but did not say! "
President: "Why did you?"
Bresci: "After the state of siege in Sicily and Milan illegally established by Royal Decree I decided to kill the king to avenge the victims."
When the President asked him why he had made that gesture, Bresci said:
"The events in Milan, where he worked the gun made me cry and I thought of revenge. I thought over because the King to sign the decrees reward the scoundrels who carried out the massacres. "


Heard the witnesses, the jurors retired to decide after a few minutes and chief accountant Carione jury read the verdict declaring the accused guilty and sentenced him to forced labor.
He served prison sentences in S. Stephen, at Ventotene (Pontine Islands) and to be able to visually inspect was built for him a special cell of three meters by three, no furnishings.
He died May 22, 1901 "committed suicide" by the State and probably was killed even before this official date. The authorities divulged the news of his suicide, hanged by a sheet or towel.
Some coincidences: a prisoner sentenced to life in Santo Stefano got the grace, the director doubled his salary.
There is also uncertainty about the place of his burial according to some sources, was buried along with his personal effects in the cemetery of St. Stephen, according to other, his body was thrown overboard. The only things left of him is his hat lifer (which was destroyed during an uprising of prisoners after the war) and the revolver with which he made regicide.