King of Italy, son of King Umberto I. and Queen Margherita of Savoy; born at Naples on the 11th of November 1869. Carefully educated by his mother and under the direction of Colonel Osio, he outgrew the weakness of his childhood and became expert in horsemanship and military exercises. Entering the army at an early age he passed through the various grades and, soon after attaining his majority, was appointed to the command of the Florence Army Corps. During frequent journeys to Germany he enlarged his military experience, and upon his appointment to the command of the Naples Army Corps in 1896 displayed sound military and administrative capacity. A keen huntsman, and passionately fond of the sea, he extended his yachting and hunting excursions as far east as Syria and as far north as Spitsbergen. As representative of King Umberto he attended the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II. in 1896, the Victorian Jubilee celebrations of 1897, and the festivities connected with the coming of age of the German crown prince in 1900. The prince’s intellectual and artistic leanings were well known; in particular, he has made a magnificent collection of historic Italian coins, on which subject he became a recognized authority. At the time of the assassination of his father, King Umberto (the 29th of July 1900), he was returning from a yachting cruise in the eastern Mediterranean. Landing at Reggio di Calabria he hastened to Monza, where he conducted with firmness and tact the preparations for the burial of King Umberto and for his own formal accession, which took place on the 9th and 11th of August 1900. On the 24th of October 1896 he married Princess Elena of Montenegro, who, on the 1st of June 1901, bore him a daughter named Yolanda Margherita, on the 19th of November 1902 a second daughter named Mafalda, and on the 15th of September 1904 a son, Prince Humbert.
When in 1915 Italy declared war on Austria, the King at once went to the war zone, remaining there until the Armistice, appointing his uncle Ferdinand, duke of Genoa, Royal Luogotenente of the kingdom to act in his stead. At the front he lived in a most unassuming manner at the “Villa Italia” near Udine, and after Caporetto near Padua, constantly visiting the trenches and the most exposed positions, as well as the military hospitals. He took the deepest interest in everything concerning the army and the welfare of the troops; but, although nominally commander-in-chief, he never interfered with the conduct of the operations nor in the matter of appointments, and he allowed himself only the same amount of leave as any other soldier. After the conclusion of the Armistice he returned to Rome on November 14, 1918, and had a triumphant reception. He visited Paris and the French front with the Crown Prince (Dec. 19–21), and subsequently London.
After the birth of his son and heir Umberto, Prince of Piedmont (Sept. 15, 1904), the King’s family was increased by two more daughters, Giovanna, born November 13, 1907, and Maria, born December 26, 1914. He was devoted to his wife and children, and to study; and he took a special interest in numismatics, having in 1910 and 1913 already published two volumes of his monumental work on the coins of Italy, the Corpus nummorum italicorum. After the war he made over to the nation a large number of royal residences in various parts of Italy, a heritage of the days when Italy was divided into a number of separate states, each with one or more royal or ducal palaces and villas. Among the most famous of these are the Pitti Palace in Florence, the villas of Castello, La Petraia and Poggio a Cajano in the neighbourhood of that town, the royal palaces of Milan, Venice, Genoa, Naples, the villa Capodimonte near Naples and the “Neapolitan Versailles” at Caserta. Some of these buildings were turned into hospitals and homes for war victims, and others into museums.
