Obverse
Obverse legend : VITT·EM·III·RE·D'ITALIA // G.ROMAGNOLI.
Obverse description : portrait à gauche du roi Victor Emmanuel III en uniforme.
Reverse
Reverse legend : AEQVITAS // G.R.M. // 1919 - R // C. 50.
Reverse description : allégorie de l’Italie et 4 lions.
Historical background
ITALY - KINGDOM OF ITALY - VICTOR-EMMANUEL III
(29/07/1900-9/05/1946)
Victor-Emmanuel III, born November 11, 1869, is the son of Humbert I and Marguerite of Savoy, and the grandson of Victor-Emmanuel II. He married Hélène de Montenegro, the daughter of Nicolas I, in 1896. After the assassination of his father by an anarchist in 1900, he ascended to the throne. This king is well known to numismatists for having encouraged the publication of the Corpus Nummorum Italicorum (CNI) from 1910, the bible of Italian coin collectors.. During the First World War, Italy sided with the Allies from 1915, but suffered many defeats before stabilizing the front at Caporetto against the Austrians. Constitutional king, he is the hostage or the accomplice of the fascists from 1922. Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) is the real chief executive, the Duce. The Lateran Accords of 1929 put an end to sixty years of conflict with the Papacy. Emperor of Ethiopia after the invasion of this country by Italian troops in 1936 and King of Albania in 1939, he let himself be drawn into the Second World War. After the landing of the Allies in Sicily, and in southern Italy, in a burst of energy, he overthrew Mussolini but had to go into exile. He abdicated in favor of his son Humbert II in 1946 and died in Alexandria on December 28, 1947..