When the price for expanding empire gets too high, there is a price to pay. It was the King’s duty to look out for his people. Though his powers were limited, his liabilities for failure were unlimited. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
There is a good deal of family resemblance in the House of Savoy the Sardinian and then Italian Royal House. With King Unberto’s resemblance to his son later King Victor Emanuell III a stamp can become more interesting. The son looks the same only with thinner hair and a slightly trimmed mustache. With research then this stamp turns out to be much older and more valuable. Well the Savoys usually go for Austrian wives and Royal bloodlines narrow, and so the stamp collector benefits.
Todays stamp is issue A25, a 60 Centesimi stamp issued by the Kingdom of Italy in 1889. It featured King Umberto I and was part of a 6 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $42.50 used. The used version of the 2 Lire stamp of this issue is worth $1075.
King Umberto I succeeded his father in 1878. The House of Savoy had previously ruled the Kingdom of Sardinia until Italy united in 1870. In doing so, Rome was taken from Papal control and named the capital. This created a deep division in Catholic Italy, indeed Umberto’s father had been excommunicated and only restored to the communion of Christ on his deathbed. Umberto, a political conservative did not have an ally in the Church as he might have hoped. Instead he made friends where he could, with the Austrians and the Germans. This made sense from his genealogy, but Austria possessed land that Italy claimed. This did not put him as one with his people. He did have colonial dreams in North and East Africa, but this required expensive draftee armies that had to deploy and fight in a far away desert.
It is easy to see how the King might have found some opposition and a group of socialists aligned with the Church is what he faced, At the vanguard of this opposition were a group of left wing anarchists that plagued the advanced world at the time. Umberto’s first run in with an anarchist was during a parade in Naples the year he ascended the throne. A dagger was thrust at him but he was able to divert it with a quick move from his sabre. The Prime Minister nearby was hit. In 1897, he was again the recipient of an attempted stabbing in Rome.
Anarchy was spreading. The costs of war in Africa were adding up and the socialists were able to tie it to an increase in the cost of bread. A strike in Milan at a Pirelli tire factory spread and the area was declared under marshal law. Troops were brought in and when the crowd did not disperse the Army fired on and perused the crowd. Hundreds died and many more participants were jailed in the following military tribunals. The commanding general did restore order but was condemned on the left for his harsh tactics. When King Umberto decorated the General he angered the left further, and indirectly signed his own death warrant.
An Italian immigrant in the USA was outraged by the events in Milan and traveled back to Italy to exact his revenge. He shot and killed the King in Monza in 1900. The murder of Umberto inspired the American anarchist who assassinated President McKinley the next year. Interestingly, while all the attackers of King Umberto were caught, none were put to death. Italy had banned the death penalty.
Well, my drink is empty and while I pour another I have a modest proposition. Anarchists should consider banning the death penalty. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.