In Florence, the cortege celebrating the survival of King Umberto wound through streets illuminated by torches and paper lanterns. The brass bands played, flags fluttered amidst open casements, and enthusiastic cheers drowned out the music. At the corner of Via Nazionale and Via Guelfa, a sudden detonation cut short the singing. An Orsini bomb had burst amidst the passers-by. The procession broke apart and the crowd surged backward; yet soon the civic associations re-formed their ranks and resumed the march. Several late-arriving witnesses remained wholly unaware that an outrage had just occurred.
The initial reports spoke of two dead and eleven wounded. Stefano Piccini, a shoemaker and father of eight children, and Leopoldo Tafanaria, a fruit vendor, were committed to the earth a few days following the explosion. Four of the injured subsequently succumbed to their wounds: Adolfo Gallori, a military clerk; Giuseppe Guasti, a laborer; Giulietta Falsi, aged six; and Primo Ricci, aged four. The chronicle notes that the remaining wounded recovered. Its final reckoning, however, fails to harmonize with this preliminary count.
The question that followed was immediate: who had thrown the bomb? Suspicion settled first upon Aurelio Vannini, a carpenter and mechanician turned tavern keeper, and Cesare Battacchi, known to the police for his political agitations. At Vannini’s dwelling, the authorities discovered explosive components, percussion caps, and a fuse. While this paraphernalia inevitably awakened suspicion, it did not of itself establish that either man had hurled the engine into the throngs. The magistrates soon widened the inquest to encompass nine men linked to the circles of the Florentine International.
The indictment reconstructed an assembly wherein Vannini had presided while Battacchi kept the minutes. According to the prosecution, the confederates had deliberated upon a reprisal against the arrests carried out during the passage of the King and Queen; bombs had purportedly been proposed by way of protest. The chronicle places this gathering on November 13, yet the year assigned to it is inconsistent with the outrage of November 17, 1878, which it subsequently narrates. It is therefore impossible to determine a certain year here without collateral sources. The prosecution linked this meeting to a conversation overheard on the morning of the blast, to revolutionary pamphlets, and to a crucible seized within their premises. This fabric of circumstances appeared to the authorities to denote the preparation of an explosive device.
The most eloquent piece of material evidence was the shattered engine itself. Two experts examined its fragments, recognizing the vestiges of an Orsini bomb, fashioned of bronze and brass and charged with approximately half a kilogram of gunpowder. It was deemed to have been cast from a certain elevation, having been molded with scant artisan care. The experts could not determine, however, whether a brick seized by the police had served in its casting. Science could identify the nature of the weapon; it could not point to the hand that had loosed it.
The trial opened in the spring of 1879. The nine defendants denied the enterprise and endeavored to establish alibis. The International itself was depicted by the chronicler as an incoherent agglomeration of impoverished laborers, devoid of settled principles and manipulated by men seeking the subversion of public order. This portrayal reflects the political animus of the author rather than a conclusion drawn from evidentiary proof. The court, for its part, was required to adjudicate a far more circumscribed matter: a bomb had exploded in the midst of a procession; had several of the accused concerted the assault?
Two news vendors, Tito Manelli and Liborio Fedi, affirmed that they had attended a conclave where the throwing of bombs against the police in the wake of the arrests had been discussed. The witness Mazzini related that Agenore Natta had clamored for bombs rather than a written remonstrance. Natta contested this account; the witness maintained it unshaken. Others testified that the men recognized one another by a pheasant feather worn in the hat, a token the prosecution construed as the badge of the cabal. The bench also heard tales of loquacious artisans, at times delivered under the influence of drink: so many reported statements, yet of distinctly unequal probative weight.
A more fragile testimony nonetheless produced a dramatic effect upon the court. The barber Ulisse Romei reported that a patron, Scacciati, had confided to him having seen Battacchi in flight after the detonation. Summoned before the bar, Scacciati at first denied recognizing the prisoner and could not explain how he had identified him. The prosecutor moved for his arrest on charges of perjury; escorted into an adjoining chamber, the man presently returned and confirmed that the fugitive was indeed Battacchi. He stated he had observed him in profile. Battacchi protested that witnesses were being coerced into falsehood. The chronicler interprets this hesitation as the dread of reprisals from the International; the reversal itself remains matter of record, and it invited circumspection.
Intimidation was by no means a mere conjecture of the chronicler. Two witnesses, Mazzini and Martelli, declared they had received threatening missives marked with the drawing of crossed daggers. A former cellmate claimed that Battacchi had urged Scarlatti to disavow their common presence on the evening of November 17 and had addressed a billet of like import to Nencioni. Another witness claimed to have learned from Nencioni’s wife the particulars of a plot in which Battacchi, Vannini, Conti, Scarlatti, and Natta were said to have taken part; she was reported to have added that a certain Gomez was likewise implicated. This was hearsay, and the text offers no independent material confirmation for all these names.
The case against Battacchi was reinforced by indications drawn from his conduct after the crime. Stage machinists and the impresario of the Teatro Nuovo testified that he had arrived at the playhouse on the following day, ghastly pale and terrified, before being taken away by two cloaked men. These particulars did not mechanically establish guilt, but the tribunal weighed them alongside the testimony concerning the assembly and the identification of the fleeing man. Vannini, for his part, was linked to the potential fabrication by the artifacts discovered in his lodgings; as for Natta and the others, the prosecution depended more heavily upon utterances ascribed to the secret gatherings and upon witnesses drawn from their immediate circle.
The depositions gathered within the prison walls opened yet another controversy. Two individuals convicted of swindling, Alessi and Burci, asserted that the defendants, having grown familiar with them during their confinement, had explained the fabrication of the bomb. The defense protested: had these two felons been placed in proximity to the accused expressly to spy upon them? The trial report records this objection without resolving it. Amidst metal fragments and accounts of conspiratorial meetings, the magistrates were also called upon to decide what measure of credit could be lent to words which convicts attributed to other prisoners.
The proof against each prisoner did not present itself in an identical light. Sicuteri and Marchini succeeded in establishing their alibis and were acquitted. The court found the others guilty of participation in the conspiracy; it held Battacchi to be the man who had cast the bomb. On June 4, 1879, Battacchi was condemned to imprisonment for life, Natta and Scarlatti to twenty years, and Vannini, Nencioni, Corsi, and Conti to nine years each. The denouement was not the forensic identification of the thrower, but a judicial determination constructed from direct depositions, hearsay, suspicious demeanor, and the internal coherence the court chose to ascribe to them.
The chronicle concludes with bitter indignation, observing that these men claimed to champion the people even as they struck down a crowd comprising children and honest laborers. Such righteous anger does not, however, obscure a significant limitation: the record preserves neither every exhibit in the case nor the detailed pleadings of the defense. It enables one, nonetheless, to trace how the city first transmuted the explosion into a collective suspicion, and how the assizes subsequently sought to apportion responsibility among nine accused men. In the streets, the bands had struck up their tunes once more after the roar of the blast; in the courtroom, the search for the hand that had loosed the engine proceeded across narratives that were, at times, fraught with uncertainty.