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A SERIES OF TRAGEDIES 87
and anything that was associated, or that could in any
manner be connected, with anarchism. They served only
one purpose
— every malign influence and reactionary element
took the acts of these misguided prodigies as a pretext
to fasten upon the people still more firmly both social
and political injustice. To no one were they so useful
as to their enemy.
For three years after this tragic period
little noteworthy
occurred in the history of terrorism. In Barcelona,
Spain, a bomb was thrown, and immediately three
hundred men and women were arrested. They were all
thrown into prison and subjected to torture. Some were
others driven insane, although after a time some
killed,
were released upon appeals made by the press and by
many notables of other countries of Europe. The Prime
Minister of Spain, Canovas del Castillo, was chiefly responsible
for the torture of the victims. And in 1897 a
young Italian, Angiolillo, went to Spain, and, at an interview
which he sought with the Prime Minister, shot him.
The same year an attempt was made on the life of the
king of Greece, and in 1898 the Empress of Austria was
assassinated in Switzerland by an Italian named Luccheni.
The latter had gone there intending to kill the
Duke of York, but, not finding him, decided to destroy
the Empress. In 1900 King Humbert of Italy was as-
The latter had been work-
sassinated by Gaetano Bresci.
ing as a weaver in America, where he had also edited
an anarchist paper. He was deeply moved when the
reached him of some soldiers who had shot and
story
killed some peasants, who through hunger had been
driven to riot. He demanded money of his comrades in
Paterson, New Jersey, and, when he obtained it, hurried
back to his native land, where, at Monzo, on the 29th of
July he shot the King. The next year on September 5,