The Newport Rising

Soaked through and exhausted after spending the night marching across the rainy Welsh countryside, around 5,000 men, many of them armed, descended on the town of Newport. Some were miners, some were labourers; all were Chartists or sympathisers to the cause of democratic reform. On that morning of 4 November 1839, they headed straight to the Westgate Hotel to make their protest heard and to free the Chartist prisoners being held there. What they did not know was that lying in wait for them inside the hotel were dozens of soldiers and special constables. The fight for