page_title: Bava Beccaris massacre
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Bava Beccaris massacre / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Moti di Milano del 1898, detti anche "Protesta dello stomaco", piazza del Duomo presidiata
context_page_description: The Bava Beccaris massacre, named after the Italian General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris, was the repression of widespread food riots in Milan, Italy, on 6–10 May 1898. In Italy the suppression of these demonstrations is also known as Fatti di Maggio or I moti di Milano del 1898. At least 80 demonstrators were killed, as well as two soldiers, and 450 wounded, according to government sources.
  The overreaction of the military led to the demise of Antonio Di Rudinì and his government in July 1898 and created a constitutional crisis, strengthening the opposition. The events of May marked a height of popular discontent with government, the military and the monarchy.
context_section_description: King Umberto I praised general Bava Beccaris and awarded him the medal of the Great Cross of the Order of Savoy (Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine Militare di Savoia) a month later, "to reward the great service you rendered to our institutions and to civilization, and to attest to my affection and the gratitude of myself and the country". On 29 July 1900, the king was assassinated in Monza by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci, who claimed he had come directly from the United States to avenge the victims of the repression, and the insult of the decoration awarded to Bava Beccaris.
  The overreaction of the military led to the demise of Di Rudini and his government in May 1898 and created a constitutional crisis, strengthening the opposition. The massacre marked a height of popular discontent with government, the military and the monarchy.
  The new Prime Minister Luigi Pelloux, who in May 1898 had restored public order in Bari without recourse to martial law, introduced a new Public Safety Bill to reform police laws, taken over by him from the Rudinì cabinet. The law made strikes by state employees illegal; gave the executive wider powers to ban public meetings and dissolve subversive organisations; revived the penalties of banishment and preventive arrest for political offences; and tightened control of the press by making authors responsible for their articles and declaring incitement to violence a crime.
  The new coercive law was fiercely obstructed by the Socialist Party, which, with the Left and Extreme Left, succeeded in forcing General Pelloux to dissolve the Chamber in May 1900, after he had promulgated the new law by royal decree. Even members of his conservative constituency accused him of acting unconstitutionally and Pelloux had to resign office after the general election in June.
caption: Piazza del Duomo, Milan, 1898. Troops deployed against demonstrators
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