We are without any direct intelligence from Warsaw, but letters
and journals from Posen have come to hand, dated so late as the 5th instant. It had been confidently reported in the German journals, that RUDIGER, having sustained a severe defeat, had re- treated into Gallitzia ; that PASKEWITSCH had been driven back ; that the massacre at Warsaw was an invention to deceive the enemy. The Posen Gazette positively denies that there is the slightest truth in any of these accounts. That the massacre took • place as we reported formerly, we think is beyond doubt. The narrative of the atrocity was too minute and circumstantial for fiction. We believe also, that one of its consequences, for good or for evil, has been the displacing of SKRZYNECKI ; who, accord- ing to the Gazette, has held no command since the 15th ult. Other accounts state that General KRUKOWIEKI had restored the most perfect order in the capital, and that it was amply supplied with ammunition and provision. The delay and indecision of PASKEWITSCH is attributed to a threatened sortie from Praga against the corps of General ROSEN, by which that suburb is masked, and whom he had been compelled to reinforce. The Emperor NICHOLAS has issued two ukases, one for a new levy of troops, the other respecting the cholera. The levy is to consist of four men out of every five hundred inhabitants,—the ordinary proportion, we believe, in such cases. The provinces of Wilna, Grodno, and several others which constitute what are more familiarly known as Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine, are exempted, for reasons too obvious to require notice. These levies, the Messager des Chambres observes, are one of the modes by which the Emperor contrives to impose no light tax. Exemptions are sold to the lords by Government for sums varying from 2,000 to 4,000 francs, while the Government finds recruits in the towns for thirty or forty francs. If a lord happen to have his slaves cut of by disease, he must, of necessity, purchase some of these exemptions. The second ukase refers to the cordons sani- taires which it has been deemed necessary to establish, and which, it appears, are looked on as even more intolerable than the evil. against the diffusion of which they are meant to guard.
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