Our columns this morning are filled with the stirring news of 
sanguinary battles in the Crimea, including the capture of 
Sevastopol, the destruction of its principal forts and of a great part 
of the Russian fleet, and the final surrender of Prince Menchikoff, 
and the remains of his defeated and more than decimated forces 
as prisoners of war. If these reports are strictly correct, for nearly 
forty years the world has witnessed no such gigantic bloodshed, 
nor any martial event pregnant with consequences so momentous. 
As to the correctness of the news, that is a point on which some 
light may perhaps be thrown by carefully separating what we 
know officially and positively from what we have only from vague 
and uncertain sources. 

We must, then, distinguish the statements into two classes— 
those relating to the battle of the Alma, fought on Sept. 20, and 
those announcing the capture of Sevastopol itself. According to 
the dispatches of Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, the allied 
armies on the 20th stormed the Russian intrenched camp on the 
hights to the south of the river Alma, and forced the Russians to 
retreat. The British took two guns. The French, in their dispatch, 
mention no trophies at all. The French loss was about 1,400; 
British the same. The Russians were estimated at 45,000 to 50,000 
men; their loss at 4,000 to 6,000. These dispatches are evidently 
written in the full flush of a maiden victory. The 50,000 Russians 
present on the Alma contrast very strongly with the 45,000 troops 
which were said to be the maximum of what was spread over the 
length and breadth of the Crimea. The two guns taken in an 
intrenched camp, defended by a “numerous heavy artillery,” look 
like very insignificant trophies when it is considered that it is