1899, after a wave of discontent in the country. The experience convinced him that the way ahead was the parliamentary route and he renounced violent action. Aftermath King Umberto I praised general Bava Beccaris and awarded him the medal of the Great Cross of the Order of Savoy (Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine Militare di Savoia) a month later, "to reward the great service you rendered to our institutions and to civilization, and to attest to my affection and the gratitude of myself and the country". On 29 July 1900, the king was assassinated in Monza by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci, who claimed he had come directly from the United States to avenge the victims of the repression, and the insult of the decoration awarded to Bava Beccaris. The overreaction of the military led to the demise of Di Rudini and his government in May 1898 and created a constitutional crisis, strengthening the opposition. The massacre marked a height of popular discontent with government, the military and the monarchy. The new Prime Minister Luigi Pelloux, who in May 1898 had restored public order in Bari without recourse to martial law, introduced a new Public Safety Bill to reform police laws, taken over by him from the Rudinì cabinet. The law made strikes by state employees illegal; gave the executive wider powers to ban public meetings and dissolve subversive organizations; revived the penalties of banishment and preventive arrest for political offenses; and tightened control of the press by making authors responsible for their articles and declaring incitement to violence a crime. The new coercive law was fiercely obstructed by the Socialist Party, which, with the Left and Extreme Left, succeeded in forcing General Pelloux to dissolve the Chamber in May 1900, after he had promulgated the new law by royal decree. Even members of his conservative constituency accused him of acting unconstitutionally and Pelloux had to resign office after the general election in June. Depictions in art The artist Quinto Cenni prepared a series of 34 eyewitness paintings showing various scenes of the disturbances in the city and of the actions taken to suppress them. These generally favored the government version of events, showing soldiers behaving with restraint under provocation and being welcomed by ordinary citizens. See also Kingdom of Italy List of massacres in Italy References Further reading Clark, Martin (1984/2014). Modern Italy, 1871 to the Present, New York: Routledge, Sarti, Roland