The Evening Post: A Century of JournalismNevins, Allan
History
The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism
Nevins, Allan
New York post
A detailed account from the London prints of Napoleon’s marriage at
Vienna was not published by the _Evening Post_ till ten weeks after the
event. Wellington stormed Badajos on April 7, 1812, and the _Evening
Post_ announced the fact on June 11, or more than two months later;
while the battle of Salamanca that summer, where Wellington “beat forty
thousand in forty minutes,” was not known for sixty-six days, the news
coming in part through a traveler who arrived from Cadiz at Salem, and
was interviewed by a correspondent there. It was the middle of October
when the armies of Napoleon and the Allies took position for the battle
of Leipsic, and Coleman was not able to publish his three-column
summary from a London paper till just after New Year’s. When the
description of the battle of Toulouse came in, there occurred an office
tragedy:
Here ought to follow an account of a great battle between Lord
Wellington and Soult [explained Coleman after an abrupt break in
the news], and other selections amounting to about two columns, but
it being necessary to get it set up abroad, the boy in bringing
it home blundered down in the street, and threw the types into
irretrievable confusion. It will be given to-morrow.
After that wily and selfish old invalid Bourbon, Louis XVIII, given his
crown by the Allies, visited London in state, a spectator sent a vivid
account of his triumphal passage up Piccadilly to the _Evening Post_.
Louis had passed so near that this tourist could have touched him. “He
is very corpulent, with a round face, dark eyes, prominent features,
the character of countenance much like that of the portraits of the
other Louises; a pleasant face; his eyes were suffused with tears.”
Then came the Hundred Days; and the greatest European news of all was
thus introduced on Aug. 2, 1815:
IMPORTANT
We received from our correspondent at Boston, by this morning’s
mail, the following important news, which we hasten to lay before
our readers:
From Our Correspondent,
Office of the Boston _Daily Advertiser_,
July 31, 1815.
A gentleman has just arrived in town from a vessel which he
left in the harbor, bringing London dates from June 24. The
principal article is an official dispatch of Lord Wellington’s,
dated Waterloo, June 19, giving a detailed account of a general
engagement.
There followed Wellington’s succinct dispatch. Its modesty of tone
misled many New York supporters of Napoleon, who made heavy bets that
Wellington had really been drubbed, and who when fuller news came had
to pay them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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