OCTOBER 17th.—We hear to-day that a battle has taken place near Manassas, and that Lee has taken some 9000 prisoners and many wagons. At 3 P.M. there was no official intelligence of this event, and it was not generally credited.
Gen. Wise writes from Charleston, that it is understood by the French and Spanish Consuls there that the city will not be bombarded.
In Eastern North Carolina the people have taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, to be binding only so long as they are within the military jurisdiction of the enemy; and they ask to be exempt from the Confederate States tithe tax, for if they pay it, the enemy will despoil them of all that remains.