Gaetano Bresci

Lore & Background

Gaetano Bresci was born into a lower middle-class Tuscan family that owned a small farm. When the kingdom began importing cheap American grain, the resulting fall in prices drove the family into poverty, forcing Bresci to begin working at age eleven. He apprenticed as a weaver in a textile factory and attended a vocational school on Sundays, specializing in silk weaving, qualifying as a silk weaver by age fifteen. His experience of exploitation in the workplace radicalized him, drawing him to anarchism. He was arrested in 1892 after confronting police over a citation given to a young worker, found guilty of insulting police, and sentenced to fifteen days in prison, after which police files marked him as a dangerous anarchist. In 1895, he was arrested for organizing a textile workers’ strike and exiled to Lampedusa, where he studied anarchist literature and became further radicalized. Granted amnesty in 1896, he returned to the mainland but struggled to find work due to his activist reputation. He developed a reputation as a dandy, engaged in numerous affairs, and possibly fathered a child with a coworker. Emigrating to the United States in 1897, he settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, married an Irish-American woman, and fathered two daughters. He worked weekdays as a silk weaver in Paterson, New Jersey, returning to Hoboken on weekends, spending his wages on fine clothing and taking up photography as a hobby. In Paterson, he became active in trade unions and the immigrant anarchist movement, briefly joining the Right to Existence Group but leaving it as insufficiently radical. He co-founded and financially supported the newspaper *La Questione Sociale*, contributing as a prolific firebrand writer. He once saved the life of Errico Malatesta by disarming an individualist anarchist who had shot and wounded him. News of the Bava Beccaris massacre—in which the army fired on and killed protesters in Milan—motivated him to swear revenge against King Umberto I, whom he held personally responsible. He requested the return of a loan he had made to the newspaper, bought a revolver and a one-way ticket to Europe, and returned to Italy to assassinate the king.

Reader's Guide

Gaetano Bresci's significance lies in his role as a regicide who directly challenged monarchical authority in Italy. The act was a prominent example of propaganda by deed, a tactic embraced by individualist anarchists. Although the Italian government suspected a conspiracy, no evidence of others' involvement was found. After his death, Bresci became a martyr within the Italian anarchist movement, which defended his act. Italian anarchists later erected a monument to Bresci in Carrara despite government attempts to block it. Bresci's life illustrates the radicalization of immigrant workers and the transnational nature of anarchist activism in the late 19th century.

Did You Know?

• Bresci saved the life of anarchist Errico Malatesta by disarming a man who had shot him.
• Bresci told a stranger before the assassination, 'Look at me carefully, because you will perhaps remember me for the rest of your life.'
• He was found dead of an apparent suicide on Santo Stefano Island within a year of his imprisonment.