Fatti di Maggio and Gaetano Bresci

In May 1898, worsening economic conditions culminated in demonstrations and brutal military intervention, centered mainly in Milan, known as the Fatti di Maggio. Chapter 6 describes how the carnage of the Fatti di Maggio along with the increased repression that followed set the stage for the most momentous of all the attentats carried out by an Italian anarchist giustiziere: the assassination of King Umberto I by Gaetano Bresci on July 21, 1900. The chapter traces Bresci’s experiences and political evolution within the radical and working class communities in Prato and, after he migrated, in the dynamic anarchist milieu in Paterson, NJ.