The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-10 00:00:00

FEDERAL DEFEAT.

We fear that the Federals have experienced
something very like a defeat before Richmond.
As the accounts come from the North, we expect
to find—what has always been the case hitherto
—that great loss on both sides means heavy loss
to the Federals. The strategic movements spoken
of appear to be those of necessity, rather than of
choice. The renunciation of White House, and
the West Point Railway, of course, with it, is not
what we should expect, unless under compulsion.
If we understand the movement rightly, General
M'CLELLAN's army, which lay nearly on the north
side of Richmond, now occupies a pnoition on its west,
between the small river Chickohaminy and the St.
James's River, which is now to be his bass of opera-
tions. We have at least another instance of Con-
federate dash and courage, and the leader in it is
again " Stonewall" JACKSON, who is the hero of the
fray. We shall soon have fuller information, but
at present the sum of all seems to be this—M'CLEL-
LAN'S right changed its entire position, and went
to the back of his left, not spontaneously, but under
a vigorous and successful attack from JACKSON—
when
right and left were massed together they
were able to repel JACKSON'S assault.

At last we have one bon mot that really was
uttered. An anecdote in history has been verified.
A popular tradition has been confirmed. CAM-
BRONNE is now provgd to have exclaimed upon the
field of Waterloo, towards the close of that terrible
Sunday, the 18th of June, 1815—not once but twice
to have exclaimed, upon the second occasion his
chivalric words being caught up and repeated by the
four battalions of the Old Guard of Napoleon—" La
Garde meurt, et ne se rend pas": "The Guard dies,
but does not surrender!" We have had so many
of these picturesque incidents demonstrated of late
years to be apocryphal that it is absolutely refresh-
ing to find one of them at length deliberately and
credibly authenticated.

It was only the other day that, immediately after
the publication of the closing volumes of Earl
STANHOPE'S admirable biography of WILLIAM
PITT, a stormy controversy arose as to whether the
words said to have been faintly articulated by the
great Minister upon his deathbed, a few minutes
prior to his dissolution, actually were or were not
spoken at all. The evidence adduced was, it will
be remembered, of the most conflicting character
possible. According to the old, time-honoured ver-
sion of the story, PITT breathed his last after
having sighed forth, " My country ; how I love
my country !" An ejaculation scarcely at all in

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the exclamation being altogether too romantic
and melodramatic to nave ever sprung, more
particularly at such a moment, from his lips.
The probability is that Lord STANHOPE'S revised
account is nearest to the truth—namely, the one
which now assures us that PITT'S last words were,
"My country ; how I leave my country !" An eja-
culation that it is perfectly conceivable PITT should
have uttered when he is said to have uttered it—
namely, just before the agonies of dissolution de-
prived him of speech, and just after he had been
stricken down upon his bed of death by the disas-
trous tidings of NAPOLEON'S great victory at Aus-
terlitz. Yet even now it is somewhat dubious
whether Mr. PITT ever said anything of the kind ;
and as a critic in the last number of Blackwood,
reasonably enough argues, at the very best the excla-
mation was little less than heathenish in its way,
under the circumstances. The Christian statesman
might, one would have hoped, have had other and
far more momentous subjects to think of, at such
an extremity, while trembling upon the verge
of the eternities.

' Again and again, we believe the Duke of WEL-
LINGTON denied ever having uttered any words at
all like " Up Guards and at 'em !" as the signal for
the final advance towards the close of the great
battle of Waterloo. It has been asserted, as posi-
tively, in like manner, that the Abbe EDGWORTH,
who attended Xing Louis XVI. in 1793 upon the
scaffold of the guillotine, asserted that he could lay
no claim to that sublime apostrophe attribnted to
him in so many histories, that apostrophe said to
have been addressed by him at the last moment to
the ill-fated monarch then lying bound upon the
plank under the knife, " Son of St. Louis, ascend '
to heaven!" According to the same inexorable
system of revising and correcting history, it is
by this time notorious . to us all that " The
Death of Lord Chatham," as painted by COPLEY,
the father of Lord LYNDHURST, was no death at all
as it happened—the Great Earl, once the Great
Commoner, having expired, net at the close of his
last speech in the House of Lords, but weeks after-
wards in his own bedchamber. Very likely,
if we took in hand this same cynical
telescope and applied to our ear this same
unbelieving ear-trumpet, we should learn, among
other things, in precisely the same way—That
1 AtioisoN never sent for the young Earl, his step-
`B", to exclaim, with an almost profane self-compla-
"neY, " See how a Christian can die!" That Sir
ISAAC
NRVITON not only never lamented the loss
of any preeious
manuscripts, by saying to the pet
dog reported to have destroyed them, " Ah,
Diamond ! Diamond,
you little know what you
have done"—but actually never had any such pet
dog going by the name of IDiamond
idle gossip IVER CRo___°
1.;
ve
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ht Thataovf
inthg eoi it i
House
ordered
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the Speakers's mace to be car e
of Commons, alli
about OLIVERO ..
speaking of it iuvidionel
3') according
to the purely
suppositious anecdote,
as "that
bauble!" That Louis XVIII. never did say,
though
it is true he is reported to have said it on his return
to France in 1814, "It is only a Frenchman the
more!" That the vast majority of all the
mots of history, both ancient and modern,
are all quite fanciful—are all entirely and
absolutely
imaginary ! Why, as a case in point, it
is only a very few years since, upon the publication
at last of the memoirs of General Count MONTHO-
LON, it turned out that the last syllables uttered by
NAPOLEON the Great, when he was dying at St.
Helena, were—not, as we had all previously been led

to suppose from the coincidence of the accounts in
every one of the earlier narratives, "tete d'armee,"
&c. The authenticity of General MONTHOLON'S
description of the scene could not, of course, be for
one instant doubted, for he surely, if any one, knew
perfectly well what then and there occurred, what
syllables were then and there articulated. MONTHO-
LON'S was the hand that closed NAPOLEON'S eyes
in death, and that hand has written the detailed
description of the close of NAPOLEON'S life—tel-
ling us that the last word uttered by the lips of
NAPOLEON was the name of " JOSEPHINE !"
,In effect, judging from the results produced by
these uncompromising labours of recent historical
and biographical critics, there is hardly a pic-
turesque incident recorded in the life of a great
man, hardly a happy saying that is reported to
have fallen from his lips, but what we are taught
to look upon with a suspicion as to its authenticity.
It is hardly less than refreshing, therefore we re-
peat, to have a glorious incident like that recorded
of NAPOLEON'S Old Guard on the field of Water-
loo, and a heroic cry like that said to have been
uttered by the lips of their chivalrous leader, CAM-
BRONE, finally and deliberately authenticated be-
yond the reach of all further denial or even doubt.
Elsewhere we give the official documents proving
this to have been done and said—documents that
have only just now made their appearance in the
columns of the Moniteur. It will be seen from
them that the evidence now adduced is that of an
old gentleman, 70 years of age, named DELEAII,
NOW (July 10, 1862) Deputy Mayor of Vicq, in the
department of the Nord, then (June 18, 1815)
private in NAPOLEON'S Guard, and as such an eye-
witness of the incident, and an ear-witness of the
saying of CAMBRONE. The evidence of M. DELEAII
is given under his own hand, and his auto-
graph is followed by the signatures of the
Prefect of the Department of the Nord, of
Marshal M'MAHON, the Duke of Magenta, of
General MASSIAT, the General of Division, and of
Colonel BOREL, the Marshal's Aide-de-Camp.
From the document itself—given by us as a histo-
rical curiosity in another part of our impression of
this evening—it will be seen that the memorable
answer given by CAMBRONE, the answer to the
demand of his Surrender, and that of his followers,
was uttered by him not once, but twice : with an
interval of fighting between the. first demand and
answer, and the second, the reiterated demand, that
they should surrender, and the second, the reite-
rated, reply (then caught up and echoed by the lips
of the Old Guard, in chorus) La Garde Ateurt, et
ne se rend pas, "The Guard dies, but does not
surrender !" Among the nobler incidents of war—
commanding our admiration—that, at, least, can be
looked back to, and believed.

The Hon. Mrs. YELTERTON in Ireland, Miss
LONGWORTH in Scotland, has at least one consola-
tion, the verdict of the public. Whatever her
failings, whatever her departure from conventional
proprieties in the period commonly designated
courtship, they are all assigned by a generous and
sympathising public to their true cause, an over-
powering passion for a man whose own evidence of
his intentions every other man has read with dis-
gust and reprobation. If the feminine enthusiasm
of an ardent mind for a man who would have abused
it if he could, who, according to his own account,
did ultimately abase it, carried her too far in manner
or language, the public can never forget the Major's
own evidence in a court of justice. It is said by
the other side that she was not a mere girl, but we
have yet to learn that a woman of high powers, of
genius we may say, is net often as much the victim
of the sentiments kindled by imagination at nine-
and-twenty as women generally are at nine-
teen. Indeed, we frankly acknowledge that
an wpalav nprhang_ do we share the popu-
the judicial impartiality at which a journalist
should aim.
The Scotch judge apparently has no such diffi-
culty. His sympathies are, to judge by his long
note on his decision, all the other way. Of course
his integrity as a judge is above all suspicion, but
Scotch judges are as liable to predominating impres-
sions, and to unconscious bias, as other men, and
most unaccountably to Englishmen and Irishmen.
Lord ARDMILLAN throughout his long note seems
to see everything in the light most favourable to
the Major, and most unfavourable to the victim of
his conduct. It is impossible, while reading his
note, not to feel ourselves in the hands of an advo-
cate of Major YELTERTON'S cause, for the judge
cannot defend the Major himself, and in those
of an opponent of Mrs. YELVERTON. We may
be quite confident the fact was not so, yet if we
were at liberty to suppose unconscious motives, we
should say the judge bad as much difficulty in
forgetting the Major's connection with the peerage,
and his marriage with the widow of an eminent and
not penniless Scotch professor, as we should have in
repressing sympathy with a deeply wronged and
interesting woman.

His Lordship, we have no doubt, weighed the

evidence, so far as intention went, with the utmost
impartiality ; yet it perplexes us to conceive what
induced him in every case of conflicting statement
to lay so much more stress on the major's testimony
than on that of his wife—for wife we must call her.
He had as much at steke as a man, as she had as a
woman, to bias his representations, and no one will
contend that his character gave his explanations
and statements more claim to credence than her's.
We do not remember that in the whole course of
her examination, or in any evidence bearing on her
veracity, she has been convicted of any approach
to a falsehood. While in regard to the major, we
have his own assertion, that at the altar of GOD,
in a house of religious worship, be solemnly
used words which, he says, he knew at the
time to be untrue. With this acknowledged
fact against him, with nothing parallel against her,
we :should be inclined to reverse Lord ARDMIL-
LAN'S course. He, generally, appears to accept
the Major's uncorroborated statements—while he,
on the other hand, appears to suspect those of his
wife unless corroborated. Yet the judge says of
this man, whose word he so readily takes—" That
the words he uttered at the altar were intentionally
untrue, and that the whole proceeding in the
chapel was an empty form and a mere mockery."
The judge acknowledged that it was sad that the
plea could be maintained, that the marriage by the
Catholic priest should be null and void—and sadder
still that " there was too much reason for believing
that the plea was founded in fact." Yet he easily
believes the man who confesses to uttering un-
truths before the ALMIGHTY, when it suited his
purpose, and is slow to believe the woman on
whom not a single untruth is charged.
If his statement of the Scotch law of marriage
lived
be rightly applied to the evidence in this case, it
will place Mrs. V
shortly ...ELVERTON in a doubly painful
Position. Since it will show that she could not be-
at Itoetrevor ;and
pave herself to be married legally at the time she
with Major YELVERTON as his wife in Ireland
of her case npon
prior to the marriage by the Catholic Priest
she regarded as it will throw the whole weight
the Irish
butmarriage.
validT h
et marriagegai
m ar
not only requisite to satisfy her
to be so there can be little
conscience, as a
riage—that it ought

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THE SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1862.