Catherine the Great & Potemkin Read online

  The best piece of evidence is that, whether or not one accepts there was a ceremony, Catherine treated Potemkin for the rest of their lives as if there had been. Whatever he did, he never fell from power; he was treated like a member of the imperial family and had absolute access to the Treasury as well as the ability to make independent decisions. He behaved with extraordinary confidence, indeed insouciance, and deliberately presented himself in the tsarist tradition.

  The foreign ambassadors suspected something: one diplomat learned from a ‘person of credit’ that Potemkin’s ‘nieces were in possession of the certificate,’16 but such was the awe for monarchs in those days that they never mentioned ‘marriage’ specifically in writing, saving it up to tell their Courts directly. Thus the French Ambassador, Comte de Ségur, informed Versailles in December 1788 that Potemkin ‘takes advantage of…certain sacred and inviolable rights…The singular basis of these rights is a great mystery which is known to only four people in Russia; a lucky chance enabled me to discover it and when I have thoroughly sounded it, I shall, on the first occasion…inform the King’17 (author’s italics). The Most Christian King already knew: by October, Louis XVI was calling Catherine ‘Madame Potemkin’ to Comte de Vergennes, his Foreign Minister – though he meant it partly as a joke.18

  The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, soon found out too. He explained the riddle of Catherine and Potemkin, while strolling in the Viennese Augarten, to the British envoy Lord Keith like this: ‘for a thousand reasons and as many connections of every sort, she could not easily get rid of him, even if she harboured the wish of doing so. One must have been in Russia to comprehend all the particulars of the Empress’s situation’19 (author’s italics). This was presumably what was also meant by Charles Whitworth, the British Ambassador to Petersburg, when he reported in 1791 that Potemkin was unsackable and unaccountable.20

  Potemkin hinted that he was almost royal. During the Second Russo-Turkish War, the Prince de Ligne suggested to Potemkin that he could become Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia. ‘That’s a joke to me,’ replied Potemkin. ‘I could be King of Poland, if I wanted; I refused to be Duke of Courland; I am far more than all that‘21 (author’s italics). What could be ‘far more than’ being a king if not being the consort of the Empress of Russia?

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  Now the couple got back to work. After the wedding, they, as usual, revelled in the suspicions of others: did anyone notice how crazily in love they were? She wondered what ‘our nephew’ – possibly Samoilov – thought about their behaviour. ‘I think our madness seemed very strange to him.’22

  On another occasion, someone had guessed a great secret. ‘What can we do darling? These things often happen,’ Catherine mused. ‘Peter the Great in cases like that used to send people out to the market to bring back information he alone thought was secret; sometimes, by combination, people just guess…’.23

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  On 16 January 1775, as soon as she knew Pugachev was dead, the Empress, accompanied by Potemkin, set out from Tsarskoe Selo for Moscow, where they were to hold celebrations for the victory over Turkey. Catherine had been planning to go to Moscow ever since the peace was signed but her dear ‘Marquis de Pugachev’ had delayed matters. Potemkin, according to Gunning, had encouraged her to visit the old capital, presumably to celebrate the opening of a window on to the Black Sea and to project the fact that government was in charge after Pugachev.

  On the 25th, she staged a ceremonial entry with Grand Duke Paul. In case she forgot that she was now in the heartland of old Russia, Paul was warmly welcomed wherever he went while, according to Gunning, Catherine ‘passed with scarcely any acclamations amongst the populace or their manifesting the least degree of satisfaction.’24 But the Pugachev Rebellion had shown her that the interior needed some attention: she was to spend most of the year there. She stayed in the Golovin and suburban Kolomenskoe Palaces, where Potemkin was also given apartments designed by her, but she found them uncomfortable and unfriendly, a metaphor for all she disliked about Moscow.

  Empresses do not honeymoon, but she and Potemkin obviously wanted to spend some private time together. In June she bought Prince Kantemir’s estate, Black Earth, where she decided to built a new palace: she renamed it Tsaritsyno. Those who believe she married Potemkin, whether in Moscow or Petersburg, claim that this was where they had their version of a honeymoon. They wanted to live cosily, so they stayed there for months on end in a cottage with just six rooms, like a couple of bourgeois.25

  Honeymoon or not, they were always planning, imagining, drafting: we can follow how hard they worked together in their letters. Catherine did not always agree with her pupil nor he with her. ‘Don’t be angry if you find that all my proposals are mad,’ she told him while discussing the problem of licensing salt production and agreeing to his proposal that Pavel Potemkin and his brother Mikhail should investigate it. ‘I couldn’t invent anything better.’ Potemkin was always off the mark with finance – whether his own or the state’s. He was an entrepreneur, not a manager. When he proposed taking on the salt monopoly, she warned him: ‘Don’t burden yourself with it because it will provoke hatred…’. He was hurt. She soothed him – but firmly: ‘I don’t want to make you look like a fool or have the reputation of one…You know very well you wrote nonsense. I ask you to write a good law…and you scold me.’ If he was lazy, for example in editing the Pugachev amnesty, she hectored him: ‘Monday to Friday is enough time to read it.’26

  Catherine’s solutions to the Pugachevschina were administrative and involved the restructuring of local government and increasing the participation of nobles, townspeople and state peasants in judiciary and welfare. She boasted to Grimm of suffering from ‘a new sickness called legislomania’.27 Potemkin corrected her drafts, as he did later with her Police Code and her Charters to the Nobility and Towns: ‘We ask you to put + near the articles and it will mean you agree. If you put # near articles, they are to be excluded…write your changes clearly.’ His changes impressed her: ‘I see in them fervent zeal and your great intellect.’28

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  The couple now arranged a piratical game of international kidnapping. In February 1775, the Empress commissioned Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky to seduce a peculiar young woman in Leghorn, Italy, where Scarface commanded the Russian Fleet, and bring her back to Russia.

  She was twenty, slender, dark-haired, with an Italianate profile, an alabaster complexion and grey eyes. She sang, painted and played the harp. She affected the chastity of a vestal virgin while simultaneously taking lovers like a courtesan. The girl used many names, but only one mattered. She claimed to be ‘Princess Elisabeth’, the daughter of the Empress Elisabeth and Alexei Razumovsky. She was the very quintessence of the eighteenth-century adventuress: every epoch is a balance of opposites so that this golden age of aristocrats was also the ripest season for impostors; the age of pedigree was also that of pretence. Now that travel was easier while communications were still slow, Europe was plagued, and embellished, by young men and women of dubious ancestry taking advantage of the long distances to claim aristocracy or royalty. Russia, as we have seen, had its own history of pretenderism and the lady with whom Orlov-Chesmensky was now to rendezvous was one of the most romantic of its impostors.

  She first emerged using the name ‘Ali Emena’ – claiming to be the daughter of a Persian satrap. On ligging jaunts from Persia to Germany, she appeared and disappeared with a vanity case filled with Ruritanian titles: Princess Vladimir, Sultana Selime, demoiselles Frank and Schell; Countess Treymill in Venice; Countess Pinneberg in Pisa and then Countess Silvisky. Later she was Princess of Azov, a Petrine name for this was the port on the Sea of Azov conquered and lost by Peter the Great. As ever with hucksters who manage to convince many of their inherent truth, she was obviously charismatic and it helped that the ‘Princess’ possessed soulful delicacy. She was everything t
hat a mysterious princess should be. On her travels, credulous older aristocrats fell under her spell, protected her, financed her…

  Towards the end of the Russo-Turkish War, she headed for the land of disguise – Italy, the realm of Cagliostro and Casanova, where adventurers were as common as cardinals. No one ever discovered who she really was, but it was not long before every diplomat in Italy was investigating her origins: was she the daughter of a Czech coffee-house owner, a Polish innkeeper, a Nuremberg baker?

  She hooked Prince Karol Radziwill, who was an anti-Russian Confederate Pole. Accompanied by an entourage of Polish nobles in their national costume, she became a political weapon against Russia. However, she made the mistake of writing to the British Ambassador to Naples. Aesthete and later cuckolded husband of Nelson’s mistress Emma, Sir William Hamilton was particularly susceptible to lissom adventuresses and he gave her a passport, but he then wrote to Orlov-Chesmensky, who immediately informed Petersburg.29

  The Catherine who replied was the ruthless usurper usually hidden from view. After Pugachev she was in no mood to take risks with pretenders, however feminine and young: the swaggering almost gangsterish tone of the letter gives us a glimpse of how she might have behaved behind closed doors with the Orlovs. If those Ragusans do not hand over the miscreant, ‘one can toss a few bombs into the town’, she told Orlov-Chesmensky when the woman visited Ragusa. But it would be much better to capture her ‘without noise if possible’.30

  Scarface devised a devious plan to play on this adventuress’s delusions of grandeur and on her romantic dreams. He had two advisers as subtle as he was brutal: José Ribas, said to be a Spanish–Neapolitan cook’s son, joined the Russian Fleet in Italy. This talented mountebank, who later became a successful Russian general and one of Potemkin’s closest cronies, worked with a deft adjutant named Ivan Krestinek, who ingratiated himself into the ersatz Princess’s suite and enticed her to meet Orlov-Chesmensky in Pisa.

  Scarface courted her, wrote her love letters, let her use his carriage and took her to the theatre. None of the Russians was allowed to sit down in her presence, as if she really was a member of the imperial family. But he also claimed to be furious that Potemkin had replaced his brother Prince Orlov and offered to use his fleet to help her mount the throne in order to return his family to their rightful place beside a new empress. His deception may have been a most pleasurable game: it seems she did become his mistress and that the affair lasted eight days. Maybe the girl believed that he was in love with her and she was successfully gulling him. In such heartless matters of state, Scarface was a master. His marriage proposal baited the trap.

  He invited her to inspect his fleet at Livorno. She accepted. The squadron was commanded by a plainspoken Scottish vice-admiral, Samuel Greig, one of the architects of Chesme. Greig agreed to welcome the Princess, two Polish noblemen, two valets and four servants, all Italians, aboard with imperial honours. There she found a priest awaiting them, surrounded by the crew in ceremonial uniforms. Imperial salvoes were fired; sailors hailed her, ‘Long Live the Empress!’ The priest chanted a blessing over ‘Princess Elisabeth’ and Orlov-Chesmensky. It is said she wept with joy as all her dreams came true.

  When she looked around, the Count was no longer beside her. His myrmidons seized ‘the villain’, as Orlov-Chesmensky reported to his Empress in Moscow, and took her below. As the ship headed for Petersburg, we know that Potemkin was in correspondence with Orlov-Chesmensky – some of the letters have survived and they would certainly have discussed this affair. Catherine shared Scarface’s letters with him. ‘My honey, my sweetheart,’ she wrote at the time of the kidnapping, ‘send me the letter[s] from…Co[unt] Al[exei] Gr[igorevich] Orlov.’ In April, the couple discussed the reward due to Krestinek for his effective if distasteful work in reeling in the adventuress. Many felt that Greig’s role in this dubious kidnapping on foreign soil was unbecoming in a British officer, but no evidence has reached us that the admiral, who was set on making a career in Russian service, had any compunction about kidnapping a young woman, especially as he was personally thanked in Moscow by Catherine herself.

  The ‘Princess’ arrived in Petersburg on 12 May and was immediately delivered under cover of darkness to the Peter and Paul Fortress, though legend says she was kept for a while in one of Potemkin’s suburban residences. Field-Marshal Golitsyn, Governor of Petersburg, interrogated her to learn who backed her and if she really believed her story. It seems that, like many of those who are able to convince followers of deceptions, she believed her own stories: Golitsyn reported to Catherine that ‘the story of her life is filled with fantastic affairs and rather resembles fairy-tales’. Catherine and Potemkin would have followed this interrogation with interest. In the fevered imaginations of Russian peasants, crazier stories had created armies. But when the ‘Princess’ wrote to Catherine asking for an interview, and signed herself ‘Elisabeth’, the Empress turned on her: ‘Send someone to tell the notorious woman that if she wishes to lighten her petty fate, then she should cease playing comedy.’31

  While Catherine and Potemkin celebrated victory in Moscow, ‘Princess Elisabeth’, who already suffered from tuberculosis, was kept in a damp cell where she dwelt in her castles in the air. She pathetically appealed for better conditions in her letters to Catherine. But she did not exist any more. No one heard her. Just as Catherine had turned a blind eye to Peter’s murder and had arranged for Ivan’s jailers to kill him if necessary, now the consumptive girl was abandoned. There were two floods in St Petersburg in June and July of that summer and a greater one in 1777, so the legend grew that the shivering beauty had been gradually drowned as the waters rose in her subterranean cell. This was the image recreated in Flavitsky’s chilling portrait. It was also claimed that she died giving birth to Orlov-Chesmensky’s child and that he was tormented with guilt – an unlikely sentiment in his case.

  She is known to history by one of the few imaginable titles she had not used herself: ‘Princess Tarakanova’, literally ‘of the cockroaches’. The name derived from her claims to be the child of Alexei Razumovsky, whose nephews were called Daraganov – which may have become ‘Tarakanov’. But ‘Princess of the Cockroaches’ could also have come from the image of the insects who were the sole companions of her last days.32 While the Empress was preparing to return to the capital, ‘Princess Elisabeth’ perished of consumption on 4 December 1775 . She was twenty-three. Her body was hastily and secretly buried – another inconvenience snuffed out.33

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  When the Grand Duke Paul and the Court returned from the Kolomenskoe Palace outside town on 6 July 1775, even dour Moscow must have been incandescent with excitement, teeming with soldiers, princes, ambassadors, priests and ordinary folk, all ready for ten days of partying. The celebrations, the first political spectacular arranged by Potemkin, were designed to reflect Russia’s victorious emergence from six years of war, pestilence and rebellion. Eighteenth-century festivities usually involved triumphal arches and fireworks. The arches, based on the Roman model, were sometimes made of stone but more usually of canvas, wood-bunting or papier-mâché. Notes flew between Empress and Potemkin over every detail: ‘Have you received the people working on the feu d’artifice for the peace?’, she asked him.34

  The intricacy and scale of the arrangements put everyone on edge. When Simon Vorontsov arrived with his troops, ‘I presented to…Potemkin the state in which my regiment was and he gave me his word he would not make us do exercises or public inspections for three months…But ten days later, against his word, he sent me to say that the Empress with all her Court would come to see the exercises…I understand that he wanted me to lose face in public…’. The next day, they argued violently.35

  On 8 July, the hero of the war, Field-Marshal Rumiantsev, approached the city. Potemkin sent a fond, respectful note to ‘batushka’ Rumiantsev arranging to meet him at Chertanova, ‘where the marquee [of the triumphal
arch] is ready’, signing off, ‘Your most humble and faithful servant, G. Potemkin.’ Potemkin then rode out and brought the Field-Marshal to Catherine’s apartments.

  On the 10th, the imperial entourage walked from the Prechinsky Gate to the Kremlin. Potemkin had stage-managed a splendid show to convince foreign observers of the ascendancy of this victorious Empress. ‘Every street in the Kremlin was filled with soldiers…a great dais…draped in red cloths, and all the walls of the cathedrals and other buildings, were lined with rows of tiered seats to create a vast amphitheatre…But nothing can compare with the magnificent sight which greeted us with the procession of the Empress…’. As the earth literally shook with the ‘sound and thunder’ of ringing bells, the Empress, wearing a small crown and purple cloak lined with ermine, progressed back to the Cathedral with Rumiantsev on her left and Potemkin on her right. Over her head, twelve generals bore a purple canopy. Her train was carried by Chevaliers-Gardes, in red and gold uniforms with glittering silver helmets and ostrich plumes. Her entire Court followed ‘in gorgeous dress’. At the door of the Uspensky, the Empress was greeted by her bishops. Solemn mass was performed, the ‘Te Deum’ sung. ‘We were entranced,’ recalled a spectator.36

  After the service, the Empress held a ceremony of decoration in the Faceted Hall. Catherine surrounded by her four field-marshals, distributed the prizes of victory. She granted Rumiantsev the title suffix of ‘Zadunaisky’ – literally ‘Beyond the Danube’. This dashing surname was Potemkin’s idea – Catherine asked him earlier: ‘My friend, is it still necessary to give the Marshal the title “Zadunaisky”?’37 Once again, Potemkin was supporting Rumiantsev, not trying to ruin him. Zadunaisky also received 5,000 souls, 100,000 roubles, a service of plate and a hat with a wreath of precious stones worth 30,000 roubles. Prince Vasily Dolgoruky received the title ‘Krimsky’ for taking the Crimea in 1771. But the most significant prizes went to Potemkin: the diploma of his first title, count of the Russian Empire, along with a ceremonial sword. The Empress emphasized his political work, specifically citing his contribution to the Turkish treaty. As she told Grimm, ‘Ah – what a good mind that man has! He’s played more part than anyone in this peace.’38 After one of their rows, she had promised, ‘I’ll give you the portrait on the day of the peace – adieu my jewel, my heart, dear husband.’39 So now Potemkin received the Empress’s miniature portrait, decorated with diamonds, to wear on his breast. Only Prince Orlov had had this privilege before, and Count Potemkin wore it in all his portraits and for the rest of his life – whenever, that is, he deigned to dress properly.