King's Street

It was here in Koningsstraat that the Italian anarchist Gennaro Rubino made a failed assassination attempt on Leopold II. It was 1902. And during that period, Brussels was a strong attraction for anarchists. Gennaro Rubino was arrested and was locked away in the prison of Leuven where he sank into madness.

At the end of October 1902, Rubino moved alone to Beenhouwerstraat 21 in Brussels. In the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, he bought photos of members of the royal family to know whom to kill. On the morning of November 15 1902, King’s Day, Leopold II returned from a church service in memory of his mother, Queen Louise-Marie, and of his wife who had died three weeks earlier, Queen Marie-Henriëtte. Rubino waited with a revolver (made in a Liège arms factory and bought in London) for the procession in Koningsstraat. When Leopold's carriage passed by, he ran into the street and fired three shots. They missed their target. Rubino was roughly handled by an angry crowd that chanted To Death! and Long live the King!. The police had to rescue the anarchist from the hands of the mob. At the police station, Rubino stated he had no regrets and claimed he had no accomplices, although there was doubt about this because the revolver was not found and could thus have been taken by someone else. Some testified that someone ran away. Rubino chose Belgium because he thought a proletarian uprising was possible in Belgium. Revolutionary thought was sparked there in the spring of 1902 by a socialist general strike, which was accompanied by street agitation that sought to enforce universal suffrage.

During the trial at the court of assizes of Brabant in February 1903, Rubino was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor and isolation. He died, likely from the effects of the Spanish flu and madness, on March 14 1918 in the prison of Leuven, not far from the monument of the fallen workers he wanted to avenge.

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