It was half past eleven on the night of July 18, 1872 when Amadeo I and María Victoria dal Pozzo were preparing to return to the Royal Palace after one of their frequent outings through the streets of nineteenth-century Madrid.3 On this occasion they were returning from a walk in the gardens of the Buen Retiro with Brigadier Burgos, who accompanied them in the same carriage. That same day the king and queen were already warned of the news that attacks were going to be committed against them in the streets of Madrid, but the king, turning a deaf ear to the indications, said:3
“If I were to heed all the threats, I wouldn’t be able to go out and I would have been killed at least a dozen times by now. I don’t want the people to say that the king locks himself in his palace because he’s afraid.”
Inspector Joaquín Martí was in charge of organizing the measures to be carried out to prevent the attack, putting plainclothes law enforcement officers all the way from the Royal Palace to the Buen Retiro Gardens, as well as a tavern located in Plaza Mayor. It was from that same tavern that a group of about twenty men was seen to come out, and when they arrived at Calle del Arenal, they divided into groups of three and four people and took up positions in Plaza del Oriente, the steps of Plaza Isabella II, by Café Levante and the Church of San Gines and the intersection between Calle del Arenal and Puerta del Sol.
Once the uncovered carriage crossed Puerta del Sol, around midnight, it headed down Calle del Arenal. It was near the current Plaza Isabella II that several men fired three times at the couple with blunderbusses and revolvers. Brigadier Burgos covered the queen with his body, while Amadeo’s response was to stand up while the coachman galloped off towards the Royal Palace.
Of the four attackers they were able to detain, one of them was killed on Calle San Martin by three shots fired by police. He was in his fifties, poorly dressed, and could never be identified. One of the horses that pulled the carriage of the consorts also died on reaching the royal palace after being hit three times.
Amedeo Ferdinando Maria di Savoia, Duke of Aosta, third son of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy was born in 1845 at Turin. On the 16th of November 1870 he was proclaimed king of Spain by the Cortes, and he arrived in Madrid on the 2nd of January, 1871, three days after Marshal Prim, chief promoter of his candidature, was assassinated.
His efforts as constitutional king were paralysed by the rivalry between the various Spanish factions (“Ah, per Bacco, io non capisco niente. Siamo una gabbia di pazzi“), but he rejected all proposals of a coup d’état.
A period of calm followed the outrage. On the 11th of February 1873, however, Amedeo, abandoned by his partisans and attacked more fiercely than ever by his opponents, signed his abdication and Spain was declared a republic the same day. Upon returning to Italy he was cordially welcomed and reinstated in his former position. María Victoria, whose health had been undermined by the stress, died on the 3rd of November 1876.