spite of the obvious unpreparedness of the nominal leaders.[1] This has special reference to the preparations for the National Holiday, but it no doubt indicates a state of affairs which was becoming more and more general. John Frost, the unfortunate Newport rebel, is alleged to have declared that he was compelled against his will to undertake the leadership.
The Newport Rising was the climax of this secret preparation. On the early morning of November 4 a body of some three thousand colliers[2] under the leadership of John Frost marched in a single column upon Newport (Monmouthshire). In the centre of the town the head of the column was unexpectedly brought up by a small body of soldiers in the Westgate Hotel, covering the line of advance. A few Chartists were killed and wounded, and the remainder dispersed without coming into action.
Round this event stories and rumours of every description gathered. On the Chartist side no reliable account has ever been published. The matter became a subject of violent recrimination amongst the Chartists in later years, and the truth, known in the first instance to very few, was obscured by charges and counter-charges until the task of estimating the true significance of the event becomes well-nigh impossible.
One non-Chartist account may be given first. It comes from David Urquhart,[3] who had been in the British Diplomatic Service in Constantinople, and had thereby become a furious anti-Russia fanatic, and saw in the Chartist insurrection of 1839 one more sample of Russian intrigue. He claimed to have derived his information from authentic Chartist sources. In this there is truth, but his information is so coloured by his peculiar notions that the story appears quite fantastic.
Urquhart begins with an account of the origin of the Chartist movement. It was set on foot as a result of a compact between Hume and Place, in order to counteract the Anti-Poor Law agitation. The movement quickly attracted advocates of violence, amongst whom Dr. Taylor, Harney, and one unnamed (probably Vincent) were the chief. These, however, were not the real leaders of the conspiracy, which was organised by men of genius. It was so marvellously designed that it betrayed the hand of past-masters in the art of secret revolution. So excellent was the plot that no Englishman
