Victor Emmanuel

Victor Emmanuel III. (1869-), king of Italy, son of King Humbert I. and Queen Margherita of Savoy, was 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 Humbert 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 Humbert (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 Humbert and for his own formal accession, which took place on the 9th and nth 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.