UMBERTO I, king of ITALY. — Born in Turin on 14 March 1844, died in Monza on 29 July 1900. Son of Vittorio Emanuele, duke of Savoy and later king of Italy, and of Maria Adelaide d’Asburgo, he was orphaned of his mother at the age of eleven.
A captain at fourteen, at twenty-two he was a divisional general and distinguished himself brilliantly in the battle of Custoza (24 June 1866), where he withstood the impact of a cavalry charge (the square of Villafranca). On 22 April 1868 he married his cousin Margherita di Savoia-Genova, by whom he had one child, the future Vittorio Emanuele III. Having ascended the throne on 9 January 1878, the twenty-two years of his reign marked a period of consolidation after the country had achieved unity. U., unlike his father, favored Italy’s alliance with the Central Powers, especially after the grave Italo-French tension of 1881–82 concerning Tunisia. He wanted Italy to have a colonial empire and supported Crispi’s African policy, shattered by the defeat at Adua (1896). In domestic policy he aimed at strengthening the authority of the State, also favoring in this field the Crispian orientation: the suppression of the uprisings of 1894 in the Mezzogiorno and in Lunigiana, and the still harsher repression of Milan’s “five red days” (1898), though they grieved his naturally kindly disposition, nevertheless appeared to him necessary for the good of the State; hence he became the victim of a political and social crisis whose causes and demands he had failed to perceive. The various attempts made against his person (Passanante, Acciarito, and Bresci), the last of which cost him his life, may in fact be interpreted as the expression of the nation’s spiritual malaise, since it did not feel itself governed in accordance with the demands of the new times. But they appear all the more heinous because they were directed against a sovereign who had personally given constant proof of his concern for all those struck by misfortune: the flood victims of the Veneto (1882), the earthquake victims of Casamicciola (1883), and those afflicted by cholera in the Mezzogiorno (1884) indeed found in him a consoler of their sufferings, and he was always exceedingly generous in providing aid to the indigent. Of rather free morals, he was certainly not naturally inclined toward religion, although he drew closer to it—thanks to the discreet efforts of his consort—toward the end of his life, and shortly before his death he gained the jubilee indulgences of the Holy Year 1900. For political more than spiritual reasons he desired reconciliation with the Holy See, and thus seems to have favored the attempt of Abbot Tosti in 1887; nevertheless, once the negotiations had failed, he allowed Crispi to resume his anticlerical policy, which regarded Catholic currents as a danger as grave as that of nascent socialism. It must, however, be ruled out—although it has been claimed—that he enrolled in Freemasonry, as is demonstrated by the fact that he received religious funeral rites.
Struck down by an assassin’s bullet in Monza, his remains were taken to Rome and buried in the Pantheon, in the tomb erected for him according to a design by the architect Sacconi.