The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-14 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1862.

How was New Orleans captured P—is a question
we are all asking, though as yet we can get but a
partial answer. To the tax payers of England it
is a question of almost as much importance as that
of the true interpretation of the battle between the
Merrimac and the Monitor. Millions of our money
may be saved if it reinforces, as we expect it will,
the lesson of the comparative inutility of forts
against gunboats and. mortar vessels, especially
when in motion. Forts Philip and Jackson, with
their CI ossing fire, the chains across the river, with
guns enflading their length, and the connected
works, were, relatively to the wooden small vessels
which attacked them, quite as strong as any forts
which, at incalculable expense, can be built at Spit-
head. Lotd PALMERSTON'S " follies," for that is
their proper name, would never be attacked, or the
attempt made to pass them, except by such iron-
shielded or plated vessels, as would have paid no
attention at all to the American forts, but have
passed by them as we might through a swarm of
gnats. If, as seems to be the fact, only one small
vessel out of fifteen was injured by these forts, en-
joying every possible advantage, we may conjecture
of what use confessedly stronger forts would be
against ships quite as much stronger than those of
the Federals.

But where, meanwhile, are the Confederate gun-
boats ? We heard much about them before the
Federal attack ; but, like our policemen, they seem
to be out of sight just when they are wanted. We
hear of them, if they ar3 anywhere, hundreds of
miles away up the stream at Fort 'Wright, which
the Confederates are beleaguering. This Confede-
rate fleet, respecting which no definite information
can be obtained, seems at least afraid to venture any
attack on the Federals. Whatever its strength, it
now lies between Commodore FOOTE'S fleet in the
North and that of Commander PORTER, which has
just taken New Orleans, in the South. Its inaction
wou:d seem to indicate that its strength, after all,
cannot be very formidable. We may expect that
it will do what it can in aid of the Mississippi
forts, which the Federals, coming down from the
North, are successively capturing; but in all pro-
bability both the forts and the fleet will soon fall
into the hands of the Northerns.
We confess that we look with almost -intense
interest, on BEAUREGARD, in his position at Corinth.
Never was an able man, with a large army, placed
at greater disadvantages; and if he extricate him.
self he will win a military name, whatever be the
fate of Secession. He seems to be hemmed in on
all sides. South of him, the great city on which
he must have chiefly relied for supplies is in the
hands of the enemy—a railroad leads direct to it
from his position. The enemy cannot use this to
attack him, because General BUTLER, who should
be at New Orleans, is not strong enough to do more
than hold that city. On the other hand, while the
guuboats command the city it is useless for BEAU-
REGARD to think of retaking it. They could sup-
port their own troops, and shell him out without
difficulty. BEAUREGARD has also another railway
south, to Mobile ; hut that smaller city is also
blockaded, and cannot help him. The South
being so hopeless for him—in front of him,
North, HALLECK has stretched his line in
augmented force ; and, if he look East, it
is but to see himself cut cff from all the Atlantic
States by General MITCHELL, who occupies the
railways, and General POPE, who lb wt.Te.hing n
join MITCHELL. On the west rolls the Mississippi
between him and Arkansas, into which, could he
cross, he would find a country which is wholly
unfit for more than guerilla warfare. A greet
victory over the Fulcra's opposed to him would
still leave him mud,. to do to work out his deliver-
mitce north, south, east, or west, though it would
doubtless give him freedom for a time. Unless he
can gain one, the course of the Mississippi will
soon be in the hands of the Federals, and the whole
of the State of that name will bo substantially in
their hands also. They will Occupy all its important
cities, and leave to the Confederates only the barren
central uplands.

Northern Virginia, too, is an exciting object of

attention, though none of the generals are in the
romantic position of BEAT:REGARD. Not one of them
is surrounded by three others and a couple of fleets.
Still there is quite enough to make it a perfect mili-
tary game of chess. There is Richmond, the political
capital of Secession and Virginia, for the prize of
the winners carrying, no doubt, all Virginia with
it. Three Generals are matched against each other
on three several approaches to it. Federal gunboats
might sail up the St. James River, on which it
stands, and place it in the position of New Orleans,
but something better than forts stops them. The
Merrimac lies repairing, repaired for aught they
can tell, that is their fear, in Norfolk navy yard;
and so the Federal fleet modestly declines either to
attack Richmond, or to aid M'CLELLAN to shell the
works of Yorktown. And now the question is,
What is to be the next move ?

Will M'CLELLAN attempt to storm Yorktown?
It is probably too strong. Will he work at it by
regular approaches ? If he does, is its capture his
ultimate object ? or, will he attempt to take the
works in flank ; or, again, will he occupy the main
body of the enemy, while BURNSIDE, only sixty
miles south, marches north, and captures the navy-
yard, which is the nest of the Merrimac, and of the
little but formidable Confederate fleet. In that case,
aided by the Federal fleet, more than one road
would be open for M'CLELLAN to Richmond. On
the whole, high strategic ability is now required in
both the great seats of the war. BEAUREGARD
needs it for escape—M'CLELLAN needs it for attack.
The conditions in the two cases seem to be just re-
versed. The defence is the great difficulty in
Mississippi ; the attack in Virginia.

We cannot still but wonder how the King of
PRUSSIA likes it ! Never has a constitutional So-
vereign (so-called) received from his lieges a lesson
so direct and overwhelming. It is not simply that
the answer given just now by the various constitu-
encies has been adverse to the policy of the chosen
Ministers of the Crown : it is, that not one of these
Ministers has been returned,through all Prussia, to
a seat in the popular branch of the Legislature.
The Cabinet is nowhere. The Prime Minister
and all his colleagues have been rejected by the
electors, and, what is worst of all, rejected ignomi-
niously. M. VON DER HEYDT himself, the
Premier, nominated against the wishes of the
Chambers by the arbitrary will of King WILLIAM,
having sat during many years past for the borough
of Elberfeld, has been at length disdainfully set
aside by his old supporters there, not because he
has in any way lost his identity in their regard,
not because his candidateship presents to them no
other than M. VON DER HEYDT in propria persona,
but because M. VON DER HEYDT stands before
them in a new role, as the Prime Minister of the
Prussian Government. A role so outrageously dis-
proportioned to his capacities that they are, for the
first time in the intercourse that has so long, and
hitherto so amicably, subsisted between himself
and his constituents, rendered too ridiculous for
further recognition! It is again an illustration of
the folly of vaulting ambition—that ambition that
is in the habit of overleaping itself. M. VON DER
HETDT has descended from his height—in the usual
way with " arch-mediocrities"--namely, by turn-
ing the old, invariable summersault! Changing
the figure of speech—the result has been for the
entire Cabinet, as the result was with that wretched
little Ox-envying Frog in the Meadow. It has
fairly burst in the abortive effort at competition.
Not only is the chief Minister of the Crown, the
Premier VON DER HEYDT, thrown aside by his
former constituency—the like melancholy fate has
befallen each and all of his colleagues in the Admi-
nistration. General VON RooN, M. YON MUIILER,
I and the rest, have had their names erased, one by
one, from the list of the national representatives.
Even the royal and loyal constituency of Potsdam
has refused, by upwards of four votes to one, to
accept as its representative in the elective chamber
the Count BERNSTORTF. Never was there a more
painful anti-climax. Remembering the astound-
ing scene witnessed upon the occasion of the
reigning monarch's Coronation, remembering that
most audacious of anachronisms, the appeal to the
spirit of the Right Divine in the middle of this
nineteenth century after the seething over
Europe of the burning lava of a series of
democratic revolutions—it certainly does appear
the most preposterous of non sequiturs when the
Sovereign who placed the crown of Prussia upon
his own head with so haughty a defiance of Modern
Liberalism, finds his first "chosen" Ministry re-
jected, one and all, root and branch, unanimously,
throughout the whole of the constituencies ap
pealed to. It is for all the world a result as ridi-
culous as that which befel the Spanish Hidalgo in
the old Joe-Miller anecdote, who, in the midst
of a consequential strut along the fashionable
lounge at Madrid, inopportunely stumbled prostrate
in the presence of all ! And whose sense of wounded
dignity—enhanced by a broken nose and a muddy
doublet—had only the feeble resource of stalking
away (broken nose in the air) with the indignant
ejaculation, "This comes of walking upon the
earth ?" King WILLIAM of PRUSSIA has come to
grief during the elections no less egregiously, igno-
,
miniousiy, ridiculously than the Spanish Hidalgo
whom we have all laughed at. His Prussian Majesty,
after donning that crown—compared with other
crowns of Europe but of yesterday, the crown, not
of the Bourbons, not of the Guelphs, not of the Bra•
ganzas, but the bran new diadem of the Princes
of the House of Hohenzollern— after donning that
recently manufactured symbol of sovereignty over
Prussia, with an exclamation of pride like that of
CHARLEMAGNE and NAPOLEON the GREAT when
assuming the Iron Crown of Lombardy, Dzeu me
la donne gare a qui la touche .'—the reigning Sove-
reign of Prussia has the anguish (after this) of be-
holding upon the very first occasion of a ministerial
a:Teal to the Prussian constituencies, of beholding
every one of his own chosen ministers turned to the
right-about by those constituencies.

To ourselves here in England, viewing the
events now referred to as we do, namely, as
deeply interested, but at the same time per-
fectly dispassionate, spectators, we cannot but
understand the whole situation of things yonder
in Prussia at this present juncture; and understand
it too, one might say, in a manner, instinctively and
at the first momentary glance. In point of fact,
we had our own electoral experiences here in Eng.
land, experiences recorded upon the pages of our
constitutional history, that serve upon the instant
by way of apt and most ready illustration. LThe
ministers of a minority—administrators thrown
n port an unwiring, House of Commons—have before
appealed (theironly resource—ana tuuur,c,i3,.. it has
turned out, a very desperate one) have before now
appealed to the country only to be rejected, as the
members of the VON DER IIEYDT Cabinet have just
been rejected by their former constituents.
The nation revolts at so transparent an attempt to
dictate to it despotically. The Sovereign in the
instance now brought under the consideration of all
Christendom, the Sovereign and not the minority
raised the defeated Administrators to power. The
members of the moribund Cabinet at Berlin were
in the first place the more insignificant members of
the previous Administration. To these " leavings"
of the last Government,there wasadded a little cluster
of mere nobodies from the back benches, the most