magistrates and ironmasters were under siege in the Castle Hotel, and the protesters effectively controlled Merthyr. For eight days, Penydarren House was the sole refuge of authority. With armed insurrection fully in place in the town by 4 June, the rioters had commandeered arms and explosives, set up road-blocks, formed guerrilla detachments, and had banners capped with a symbolic loaf and dyed in blood. Those who had military experience had taken the lead in drilling the armed para-military formation, and created an effective central command and communication system. This allowed them to control the town and engage the formal military system, including: Ambushing the 93rd's baggage-train on the Brecon Road, under escort of forty of the Glamorgan Yeomanry, and drove them into the Brecon hills. Beating off a relief force of a hundred cavalry sent from Penydarren House. Ambushing and disarming the Swansea Yeomanry on the Swansea Road, and throwing them back in disorder to Neath. Organising a mass demonstration against Penydarren House. Having sent messengers, who had started strikes in Northern Monmouthshire, Neath and Swansea Valleys, the riots reached their peak. However, panic had spread to the family oriented and peaceful town folk, who had now started to flee what was an out-of- control town. With the rioters arranging a mass meeting for Sunday 6th, the government representatives in Penydarren House managed to split the rioters' council. When 450 troops marched to the mass meeting at Waun above Dowlais with levelled weapons, the meeting dispersed and the riots were effectively over. Outcome By 7 June the authorities had regained control of the town through force with up to 24 of the protesters killed. Twenty-six people were arrested and put on trial for taking part in the revolt. Several were sentenced to terms of imprisonment, others sentenced to penal transportation to Australia, and two were sentenced to death by hanging – Lewis Lewis (Lewsyn yr Heliwr) for Robbery and Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) for stabbing a soldier (Private Donald Black of the Highland Regiment) in the leg with a seized bayonet. Lewsyn yr Heliwr's sentence was downgraded to a life sentence and penal transportation to Australia when one of the police officers who had tried to disperse the crowd testified that he had tried to shield him from the rioters. He was transported aboard the vessel John in 1832 and died 6 September 1847 in Port Macquarie, New South Wales.