UMBERTO I, King of Italy. - Born in Turin on 14 March 1844, died at Monza on 29 July 1900. Son of Victor Emmanuel duke of Savoy, later king of Italy, and of Maria Adelaide of Habsburg, he lost his mother when he was barely eleven years old.
A captain at fourteen, at twenty-two he was a divisional general and conducted himself brilliantly at 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 of Savoy-Genoa, by whom he had, as his only son, the future Victor Emmanuel III. Having ascended the throne on 9 January 1878, the twenty-two years of his reign marked a period of consolidation after the country's achieved unity. U., unlike his father, favored Italy's alliance with the Central Empires, especially after the grave Italo-French tension of 1881-82 over Tunisia. He wished Italy to have a colonial empire and supported Crispi's African policy, shattered by the reverse at Adua (1896). In domestic policy he aimed at a strengthening of the authority of the State, favorable in this field too to the Crispi line: the repression of the disturbances of 1894 in the Mezzogiorno and in Lunigiana and that, even harsher, of the "five red days" of Milan (1898), while they grieved the natural goodness of his soul, nonetheless appeared to him necessary for the good of the State, whence he was the victim of a political and social crisis whose causes and demands he had failed to perceive. The various attempts on his person (Passanante, Acciarito and Bresci), the last of which cost him his life, can in fact be interpreted as the expression of the spiritual unease of the nation, which did not feel itself governed as the new times demanded. But they appear all the more savage because they were directed against a sovereign who had personally given constant proofs of his interest in all those struck by misfortunes: those flooded in the Veneto (1882), the earthquake victims of Casamicciola (1883), the cholera victims of the Mezzogiorno (1884) had him indeed as a comforter of their misfortunes, and he was always most generous in aid to the needy. Of rather free morals, he was certainly not inclined to religion, even though he came to draw closer to it - thanks to the discreet work of his consort - toward the end of his life, and shortly before dying he gained the jubilee indulgences of the Holy Year 1900. More for political than spiritual motives he desired reconciliation with the Holy See, so much so that he seems to have favored Abbot Tosti's attempt of 1887: nevertheless, once the negotiations failed, he allowed Crispi to resume his anticlerical policy, which saw in the Catholic currents a danger as grave as that of nascent socialism. It is, however, to be excluded - although it has been said - that he enrolled in Freemasonry, as is shown by the fact that he had a religious funeral.
Having fallen under the assassin's lead at Monza, his remains were brought to Rome and interred in the Pantheon, in the tomb erected for him on a design by the architect Sacconi.
Bibliography2 works
Renzo U. Montini