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Rubino. De aanslag op Leopold II
Op 15 november 1902 werd koning Leopold II in Brussel het slachtoffer van een moordpoging.
Gennaro Rubino, een Italiaanse anarchist, was speciaal met dat doel naar Brussel gereisd. Met zijn daad wilde hij de talloze manifestanten wreken die, volgens hem, door de Belgische regering vermoord werden in de lente van dat jaar toen ze betoogden voor het algemeen stemrecht.
Toen de koninklijke familie terugkeerde van het Te Deum in de kathedraal, vuurde Rubino een paar schoten af naar de koets. Leopold II ontsnapte aan de aanslag, maar Rubino werd opgepakt en kreeg een 'voorbeeldstraf'. Hij sleet de rest van zijn dagen in de gevangenis.
In een levendige stijl vertelt Anne Morelli het verhaal van de obscure paria Rubino die bijna koningsmoordenaar werd, en plaatst ze deze weinig bekende episode uit de Belgische geschiedenis in haar historische context.
Anne Morelli is doctor in de geschiedenis en professor aan de ULB. Zij publiceerde eerder bij EPO o.a. de bestseller "De grote mythen uit de geschiedenis van België, Vlaanderen en Wallonië" (1996), "Belgische Emigranten. Oorlogsvluchtelingen, economische emigranten en politieke vluchtelingen uit onze streken van de 16de eeuw tot vandaag" (1999) en "Elementaire principes van oorlogspropaganda. Bruikbaar bij koude, warme of lauwe oorlogen..." (2001).
Gennaro Rubino, een Italiaanse anarchist, was speciaal met dat doel naar Brussel gereisd. Met zijn daad wilde hij de talloze manifestanten wreken die, volgens hem, door de Belgische regering vermoord werden in de lente van dat jaar toen ze betoogden voor het algemeen stemrecht.
Toen de koninklijke familie terugkeerde van het Te Deum in de kathedraal, vuurde Rubino een paar schoten af naar de koets. Leopold II ontsnapte aan de aanslag, maar Rubino werd opgepakt en kreeg een 'voorbeeldstraf'. Hij sleet de rest van zijn dagen in de gevangenis.
In een levendige stijl vertelt Anne Morelli het verhaal van de obscure paria Rubino die bijna koningsmoordenaar werd, en plaatst ze deze weinig bekende episode uit de Belgische geschiedenis in haar historische context.
Anne Morelli is doctor in de geschiedenis en professor aan de ULB. Zij publiceerde eerder bij EPO o.a. de bestseller "De grote mythen uit de geschiedenis van België, Vlaanderen en Wallonië" (1996), "Belgische Emigranten. Oorlogsvluchtelingen, economische emigranten en politieke vluchtelingen uit onze streken van de 16de eeuw tot vandaag" (1999) en "Elementaire principes van oorlogspropaganda. Bruikbaar bij koude, warme of lauwe oorlogen..." (2001).
- GenresHistory
191 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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November 11, 2022No kings were harmed during the writing of this review, unless they were very, verysmall.
Perhaps this book could go in my personal list of top 112 really odd books, though it is not an odd book itself as an object it is perfectly normal and even in its writing style it is entirely uncontroversial and it's political stance I would say is curiously for the subject entirely middle of the road. But the story, is just an onion of oddity, each layer can be peeled away to find something stranger beneath it. I found it so odd, that I have unfortunately written about it at extreme length.
What is that story? Well on the face of it, it is a perfectly usual story; a middle aged Italian man, Gennaro Rubino, buys a hand gun in London, travels to Brussels, he stands for three hours on the 15th of November 1902 in temperatures of plus six degrees Celsius outside a cathedral, inside which King Leopold II of Belgium was attending a Te Deum. The royal party leave the service in three coaches, Rubino fires twice, hitting the third coach - but injuring no person or animal. He is arrested, charged and tried; found guilty of attempted assassination of the King, and sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement with hard labour.
As I said, a perfectly usual story, particularly for 1902. But as you start to consider each element it gets stranger. Rubicon did not hit anybody, but he was no stranger to firearms - he served a long time in the Italian army. He was promoted to sergeant, demoted to the ranks and promoted again to corporal, not that I want to suggest that he was a champion marksman, I don't know that, but we can safely assume a degree of competence. The initial investigation confirmed that four bullets remained in the fun, which suggests that maybe he deliberately tried not to injure anyone, or at least was not particularly interested in injuring anyone. In support of this the author tells us that before Rubino's attack a man had fired a gun at the Prince of Wales at Brussels Nord station while he was en route to Copenhagen; the man missed and was found not guilty by a jury ( the Boar War was in progress at the time, and sympathies for the gallant Boars and against the bullying British may have played a part) however on he other hand while in Brussels, Rubino had noticed that Leopold II was very unpopular (the feeling was possibly mutual, the King at that stage of is reign was spending a lot of time in the south of France) and may have believed that an attempt on the King's life might spark a general rebellion. In the event the court took the view that it wished to discourage violent demonstrations against their own royal family irrespective of their popularity and applied the greatest possible sentence.
But why shoot at a king anyway (irrespective of whether you intend to hit them or not) two reasons are suggested; firstly revenge for the deaths of protesters in Leuven who had been demonstrating for equal voting rights in Belgium, the country had universal manhood suffrage but on an unequal basis in which certain categories of citizens got extra votes.
A second possibility was that Rubino wanted to restore his reputation in Anarchist circles after having been unmasked as a police informer.
Here I have to leap back in time, after is time in the army, Rubino returned to his fathers home in southern Italy, he married but couldn't find a job - there was a time when southern Italians were emigrating to the USA if they could in search of work, his wife had a breakdown and went into an asylum, Rubino managed to get enough money together to go to London where he had a few jobs in restaurants. He forgot that he was already married and got married again, the couple had a son who they named Marxandengels - he was known as Mark later in life. Anarchism was particularly vital in the political life of Rubino's native region, and possibly this had some role in his demotion in the army which was due to his writing out a letter of complaint about an injustice - though his defence was that he had written the letter but only because he had the nicest handwriting out of those making the complaint. Any road, in London he was active in anarchist expatriate circles, and one day while working in Glasgow Rubino was approached by an official from the Italian embassy offering him money in exchange for becoming an informant. This is roughly the time of The secret Agent, and that conservative fantasy The Man who was Thursday, Rubino had the idea of buying a house - where Anarchists could safe meet, and a printing press to produce anarchist literature; it was plainly much more convenient for the Italian authorities to keep track of Italian Anarchists abroad if they knew where they were meeting and what they were publishing so they began to advance money to Rubino to buy a house. This sensible arrangement fell apart quite quickly and Rubino and another man were unmasked as informers, the author argues that it was Rubino's plan all along to co-operate with the authorities only to unmask the informers, equally he was only getting temporary jobs, he couldn't afford to support his family, their son was being brought up by Rubino's sister-in-law, and the married couple had separated. The man was in a desperate situation. The arrangement with the Italian embassy was over, Rubino was in disgrace with both the authorities and the anarchists, the house was sold. At this point Rubino buys the gun and travels to Belgium.
The story of his life in prison is also strange. The prison in Leuven was a modern one, the cell was over twelve square metres large with its own toilet, it was well lit and airy,he could borrow books from the prison library, and he had three meals a day but solitary confinement is harsh and over the years it took a considerable toll on Rubino's mental health. At first the hard labour was eleven hours of sewing a day, later he did translation, and worked on translating an Italian book about prisons into French - apparently he had excellent French. He asked to see a Priest but after one visit the Priest complained that he was a pantheist and would not see him again. Rubino was seen by the prison doctor who felt that his mental health might improve if he was allowed to grow a moustache - as moustache wearing was so widespread among Italian men he suspected that Rubino was suffering from his acute moustachelessness. This also amazed me, not that prisoners were required to be clean shaven but just the implications of that. Were prisoners given razors, or were prison warders trained as barbers so that they could regularly visit each prisoner to give them a shave and a haircut, you could hardly maintain solitary confinement otherwise.
Rubino died in March 1918, the prison regime was maintained during the war despite the German occupation. The prison authorities recorded the cause of death as due to liver disease, the author considers that Spanish flu probably brought about his death after sixteen years of imprisonment. It seems a final uncertainty, in a life which is well documented yet obscure.
Perhaps this book could go in my personal list of top 112 really odd books, though it is not an odd book itself as an object it is perfectly normal and even in its writing style it is entirely uncontroversial and it's political stance I would say is curiously for the subject entirely middle of the road. But the story, is just an onion of oddity, each layer can be peeled away to find something stranger beneath it. I found it so odd, that I have unfortunately written about it at extreme length.
What is that story? Well on the face of it, it is a perfectly usual story; a middle aged Italian man, Gennaro Rubino, buys a hand gun in London, travels to Brussels, he stands for three hours on the 15th of November 1902 in temperatures of plus six degrees Celsius outside a cathedral, inside which King Leopold II of Belgium was attending a Te Deum. The royal party leave the service in three coaches, Rubino fires twice, hitting the third coach - but injuring no person or animal. He is arrested, charged and tried; found guilty of attempted assassination of the King, and sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement with hard labour.
As I said, a perfectly usual story, particularly for 1902. But as you start to consider each element it gets stranger. Rubicon did not hit anybody, but he was no stranger to firearms - he served a long time in the Italian army. He was promoted to sergeant, demoted to the ranks and promoted again to corporal, not that I want to suggest that he was a champion marksman, I don't know that, but we can safely assume a degree of competence. The initial investigation confirmed that four bullets remained in the fun, which suggests that maybe he deliberately tried not to injure anyone, or at least was not particularly interested in injuring anyone. In support of this the author tells us that before Rubino's attack a man had fired a gun at the Prince of Wales at Brussels Nord station while he was en route to Copenhagen; the man missed and was found not guilty by a jury ( the Boar War was in progress at the time, and sympathies for the gallant Boars and against the bullying British may have played a part) however on he other hand while in Brussels, Rubino had noticed that Leopold II was very unpopular (the feeling was possibly mutual, the King at that stage of is reign was spending a lot of time in the south of France) and may have believed that an attempt on the King's life might spark a general rebellion. In the event the court took the view that it wished to discourage violent demonstrations against their own royal family irrespective of their popularity and applied the greatest possible sentence.
But why shoot at a king anyway (irrespective of whether you intend to hit them or not) two reasons are suggested; firstly revenge for the deaths of protesters in Leuven who had been demonstrating for equal voting rights in Belgium, the country had universal manhood suffrage but on an unequal basis in which certain categories of citizens got extra votes.
A second possibility was that Rubino wanted to restore his reputation in Anarchist circles after having been unmasked as a police informer.
Here I have to leap back in time, after is time in the army, Rubino returned to his fathers home in southern Italy, he married but couldn't find a job - there was a time when southern Italians were emigrating to the USA if they could in search of work, his wife had a breakdown and went into an asylum, Rubino managed to get enough money together to go to London where he had a few jobs in restaurants. He forgot that he was already married and got married again, the couple had a son who they named Marxandengels - he was known as Mark later in life. Anarchism was particularly vital in the political life of Rubino's native region, and possibly this had some role in his demotion in the army which was due to his writing out a letter of complaint about an injustice - though his defence was that he had written the letter but only because he had the nicest handwriting out of those making the complaint. Any road, in London he was active in anarchist expatriate circles, and one day while working in Glasgow Rubino was approached by an official from the Italian embassy offering him money in exchange for becoming an informant. This is roughly the time of The secret Agent, and that conservative fantasy The Man who was Thursday, Rubino had the idea of buying a house - where Anarchists could safe meet, and a printing press to produce anarchist literature; it was plainly much more convenient for the Italian authorities to keep track of Italian Anarchists abroad if they knew where they were meeting and what they were publishing so they began to advance money to Rubino to buy a house. This sensible arrangement fell apart quite quickly and Rubino and another man were unmasked as informers, the author argues that it was Rubino's plan all along to co-operate with the authorities only to unmask the informers, equally he was only getting temporary jobs, he couldn't afford to support his family, their son was being brought up by Rubino's sister-in-law, and the married couple had separated. The man was in a desperate situation. The arrangement with the Italian embassy was over, Rubino was in disgrace with both the authorities and the anarchists, the house was sold. At this point Rubino buys the gun and travels to Belgium.
The story of his life in prison is also strange. The prison in Leuven was a modern one, the cell was over twelve square metres large with its own toilet, it was well lit and airy,he could borrow books from the prison library, and he had three meals a day but solitary confinement is harsh and over the years it took a considerable toll on Rubino's mental health. At first the hard labour was eleven hours of sewing a day, later he did translation, and worked on translating an Italian book about prisons into French - apparently he had excellent French. He asked to see a Priest but after one visit the Priest complained that he was a pantheist and would not see him again. Rubino was seen by the prison doctor who felt that his mental health might improve if he was allowed to grow a moustache - as moustache wearing was so widespread among Italian men he suspected that Rubino was suffering from his acute moustachelessness. This also amazed me, not that prisoners were required to be clean shaven but just the implications of that. Were prisoners given razors, or were prison warders trained as barbers so that they could regularly visit each prisoner to give them a shave and a haircut, you could hardly maintain solitary confinement otherwise.
Rubino died in March 1918, the prison regime was maintained during the war despite the German occupation. The prison authorities recorded the cause of death as due to liver disease, the author considers that Spanish flu probably brought about his death after sixteen years of imprisonment. It seems a final uncertainty, in a life which is well documented yet obscure.
August 28, 2025
Een leuke snelle read, verwacht niet om iets nuttig te leren
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