Catherine the Great & Potemkin Read online

  Potemkin however worked to pull the rug from under the Khanate. Its economy depended on Greek, Georgian and Armenian traders and fruit-growers – all Orthodox. The Tartars, whipped up by their mullahs, baited by the ‘Albanians’ and provoked by Shagin’s Polish myrmidons, turned against these Christians. In 1779, Russia sponsored the exodus of the 31,098 Christians, under the control of General Alexander Suvorov. The Christians were presumably happy to leave a chaotic Moslem quagmire to find refuge in an Orthodox empire. They were promised economic privileges in Russia. But the exodus sounds like a death march. Their homes were not ready and many died on the road. Potemkin and Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky, the senior political and military officials, must share responsibility for their misery. But Potemkin did settle the majority in Taganrog and his new town of Mariupol. In imperialistic terms, it worked splendidly: without either trade or agriculture, Shagin found himself impoverished except for Russian generosity. Shagin’s brothers rebelled in the summer of 1782. When he fled again, begging for Russian aid, one of them, Bahadir Giray, was elected khan. His reign was to be short.

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  It took Potemkin, who now assumed complete command of the southern theatre, just sixteen days to make it across Eurasia from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He travelled at the galloping pace usually reserved for couriers – but he made it his own. He grumbled to Catherine about ‘displeasing companions, bad weather, poor roads and slow horses’.6 The displeasing companion was probably Major Semple. Potemkin quizzed him on the armies of Western Europe, and the rascal claimed to have advised him on Russian military reforms, though Potemkin’s ideas predated Semple’s arrival and he executed them after his departure. The Prince was losing patience with the conman. Potemkin and Catherine exchanged warm letters all the way. She wanted to hear about the Crimea but gave him the latest news about Katinka Skavronskaya, who was ill. Lanskoy visited her and then reported to Catherine and Potemkin that she was getting better – this was how their peculiar family worked.7

  On 16 September 1782, Serenissimus entered his new city of Kherson. On the 22nd, he met Shagin Giray at Petrovsk (now Berdyansk) to negotiate Russian intervention. He then ordered General de Balmain to invade the Crimea. The Russians routed the rebels, killing 400 ‘rather wantonly’ before taking the capital Bakhchisaray. Shagin Giray, guarded by Russian soldiers, took possession of his capital again. On 30 September, Potemkin’s nameday, which he usually celebrated with Catherine in his apartments, she sent him some wifely presents – a travelling tea-set and a dressing case: ‘What a wild place you’ve gone to for your nameday, my friend.’8

  A measure of tranquillity was restored by mid-October and Potemkin returned to his new town, Kherson. For the rest of his life, he spent much of his time in the south. Catherine missed him deeply but ‘my master, I have to admit that your four-week stay in Kherson has been immensely useful’.9 He worked hard to accelerate Kherson’s constructions and shipbuilding, and inspected the building of the Kinburn fortress opposite Ochakov, the Ottoman stronghold. ‘How can this small town raise its nose against the young Colossus of Kherson?’, asked Catherine as the partners waited to see if the Sublime Porte would go to war against her. Luckily the united front of Austria and Russia proved sufficient to intimidate the Porte.10 The Colossus rushed back to Petersburg to persuade Catherine to annex the Khanate.11

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  It was a different Prince who returned to Petersburg in late October. He had a mission – and everyone noticed ‘the character and conduct of Prince Potemkin are so materially changed within these six months,’ Harris reported to Lord Grantham, the new Foreign Secretary. ‘He rises early, attends to business, is become not only visible but affable to everybody’.12

  Serenissimus even dismissed his basse-cour. Major Semple tried to use Potemkin’s protection to squeeze the merchants of Petersburg and extort money from the Duchess of Kingston. When he threatened to send Russian soldiers to her house to get the money, Potemkin exposed the ‘Prince of Swindlers,’ who fled Russia, defrauding merchants all the way home. Little is known about Semple’s subsequent adventures, but Ligne later wrote to Potemkin that he had entertained ‘one of Your Highness’s Englishmen, le Major Semple, who told me he accompanied you to the conquest of the Crimea’. He was convicted of fraud in England, transported in 1795, escaped, then died in prison in London in 1799.13 Serenissimus enjoyed his menagerie of mountebanks, learning all he could from them and storing it in his prodigious memory. They used him. But Potemkin always got the better deal.

  Now he started to sell his houses, horses, estates, jewels, amassed ‘loads of ready money’, and declared that he wished to retire to Italy. He told Harris he had lost his power and that he had offered Catherine his resignation but she had rejected it. Potemkin was forever threatening resignation – Catherine must have been used to it. Nonetheless, no one was quite sure what was afoot.14 He even paid his debts.

  It seemed as if God was paying Potemkin’s debts too. Prince Orlov had gone mad after the death of his new young wife in June 1781 and wandered ranting, through the corridors of palaces. Nikita Panin had a stroke on 31 March 1783. When these two eclipsed suns, who loathed one another, yet grudgingly admired Potemkin, died within a few days, Catherine thought they would be ‘astonished to meet again in the other world’.15

  The Prince was organizing his affairs because he was preparing himself for his life’s work in the south. He was in his creative prime when Catherine’s ‘dear master’ got back to Petersburg – ideas whirled out of him as forcefully and picturesquely as sparks from a Catherine wheel. He immediately set to work on her to settle the Crimean problem once and for all. Was Catherine the tough, obstinate strategist and Potemkin the cautious tactician, as historians would claim later? In this case, Potemkin took the tougher line and got his way – but in different cases they took different lines: it is impossible to generalize. When faced with a problem or a risk, the pair argued, shouted, sulked, were reconciled, back and forth, until their joint policy emerged fully formed.

  In late November, the Prince explained to Catherine, in a passionate tour de force, why the Crimea, which ‘breaks our border’, had to be taken because the Ottomans ‘could reach our heart’ through it. This had to be done now while there was still time, while the British were still at war with the French and Americans, while Austria was still enthusiastic, while Istanbul was still wracked with riots and plague. In a stream of imperialistic rhetoric and erudite history, he exclaimed:

  Imagine the Crimea is Yours and the wart on your nose is no more!…Gracious Lady…You are obliged to raise Russian glory! See who has gained what: France took Corsica, the Austrians without a war took more in Moldavia than we did. There is no power in Europe that has not participated in the carving-up of Asia, Africa, America. Believe me, that doing this will win you immortal glory greater than any other Russian Sovereign ever. This glory will force its way to an even greater one: with the Crimea, dominance over the Black Sea will be achieved.

  And he finished: ‘Russia needs paradise.’16

  Catherine hesitated: would it lead to war? Could not they just take the port of Akhtiar instead of the whole Khanate? Potemkin lamented Catherine’s caution to Harris: ‘Here we never look forward or backward and are governed solely by the impulse of the hour…If I was sure of being applauded when I did good or blamed when I did wrong, I should know on what I was to depend…’. Harris at last came in useful when Potemkin extracted his assurance that Britain would not prevent Russian expansion at the cost of the Porte.17

  Then, just a few weeks after Potemkin’s return, Catherine gave him the ‘most secret’ rescript to annex the Crimea – but only if Shagin Giray died or was overthrown or he refused to yield the port of Akhtiar or if the Ottomans attacked or…There were so many conditions that both knew that he was really free to pull off his prize if he could get away with it. ‘We hereby declare our will’,
the Empress wrote to the Prince on 14 December 1782, ‘for the annexation of the Crimea and the joining of it to the Russian Empire with full faith in you and being absolutely sure that you will not lose convenient time and opportune ways to fulfil this.’ There was still a risk that the Ottoman Empire would go to war or that the Great Powers would prevent it.18

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  No wonder Potemkin was working so hard. He had to prepare for war with the Sublime Porte while hoping to avoid it. Catherine kept Joseph closely informed by letter on the shrewd calculation that, if he had received no surprises, he was less likely to bridle. If they were quick and the operation bloodless, they could get the Crimea before the rest of Europe could react. The clock was ticking because France and Britain were just negotiating peace in the American War. They signed the preliminaries on 9/20 January in Paris. The peace was not yet ratified, so the Russians could count on another six months. The diplomats tried to guess how far the partners would go: ‘The views of Prince Potemkin extend themselves every day and are of such a magnitude’, reported Harris, ‘as to exceed the ambition of the Empress herself.’19 Sir James understated the case when he wrote that ‘notwithstanding the pains he took to dissemble it’, Serenissimus was ‘very sorry to see our war drawing so near to its end…’.20

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  These were Potemkin’s last opportunities to enjoy the companionship of Sir James Harris. The Englishman felt he had played his last hand in Petersburg. When his friend Charles James Fox returned to the ministry as one-half of the Fox–North coalition, pursuing a pro-Russian policy, Harris demanded to be recalled while relations with Russia were friendly. Sir James and the Prince saw each other for the last time in the spring, when the latter was increasingly occupied with his southern preparations. Harris received his farewell audience from the Empress after Potemkin’s departure on 20 August 1783 and then left for home.*1

  Harris had made the mistake of basing his hopes on a man who was happy to advocate an English alliance, but who was really pursuing an entirely different policy in the south. When the Austrian alliance became active, Harris’s beguilement by Potemkin was exposed.

  Sir James left Petersburg with high credit in London because his role as Potemkin’s friend and tutor in English civilization had brought him closer to the top than any other ambassador was ever to get in Russia. But he must have had mixed feelings about Potemkin, who had so played him. ‘Prince Potemkin is no longer our friend,’ he sadly told Charles James Fox. Potemkin’s archives show they kept in cheerful contact long afterwards. Harris often recommended travellers to the Prince: one was Archdeacon Coxe, the memoirist. ‘I know I owe you excuses,’ wrote Harris, ‘…but I know how you like men of letters…’. Catherine came to regard Harris as a ‘trouble-maker and intriguer’. Potemkin had ‘crushes’ on his friends and then moved on. He told a later ambassador that he had done much for Harris, who had ‘ruined everything’, and he growled at Bezborodko that Harris was ‘insidious, lying and not very decent’. Their friendship was later destroyed by Britain’s growing hostility to Russia – just one more sad example of the special graveyard reserved for diplomatic friendships.21

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  The Prince spent February and March 1783 preparing military plans to cover Sweden and Prussia, potential Ottoman allies against Russia, while fielding armies against the Turks and sending the Baltic fleet back to the Mediterranean. The object of any war had to be the Ottoman fortress of Ochakov that dominated the Liman (estuary) of the Dnieper and therefore access to the Black Sea. Potemkin also turned his reforming eye to the dress and arms of the Russian soldier: in one of his barnstorming memoranda to Catherine, using his common sense and colourful colloquialisms, he proposed to reduce the burden of the common soldier by cutting out all the foppish Prussian paraphernalia. Unusually for a Russian general and an eighteenth-century commander, he actually wanted to improve the comfort of his cannon-fodder.

  The Russian infantryman was expected to powder his hair and braid it, which could take twelve hours, and wear the most impractical clothes including tight high boots, stockings, expensive deerskin trousers and the pointed triangular stiff hat that did not protect against the elements. All this ‘could not be better invented to depress the soldier’, wrote Potemkin, who proposed: ‘All foppery must be eliminated.’ His denunciations of the Prussian martial hairstyle are classic Potemkin: ‘About the hairdo. To curl up, to puff, to plait braids – is that soldiers’ business? They have no valets. And what do they need curls for? Everyone must agree it’s healthier to wash and comb the hair than to burden it with powder, fat, flour, hairpins, braids. The soldier’s garb must be like this: up and ready.’ Only months after becoming favourite, he also ordered officers to instruct soldiers without ‘inhumane beatings’ that made service disgusting and unbearable. Instead he recommended ‘affectionate and patient interpretation’. Since 1774, he had been lightening and improving the Russian cavalry too, creating new Dragoon regiments and making the equipment and armour of the Cuirassiers easier to handle.

  Years ahead of his time and unaffected by the brutish Prussomania of most Western (and Russian) generals, Potemkin borrowed from the light costumes of the Cossacks instead of the rigid uniforms of Prussian parade grounds to design the new uniform, which was to be named after him: warm comfortable hats that could cover the ears, short haircuts, puttees instead of stockings, loose boots, no ceremonial swords, just bayonets. Potemkin’s new uniform set the standard for ‘the beauty, simplicity and convenience of the garment, accommodated to the climate and spirit of the country’.22

  It was time to leave. He knew that if the Crimean adventure succeeded, ‘I shall soon be seen in another light and then if my conduct is not approved I will retire to the country and never again appear at Court.’23 But the Prince was dissembling again: he was convinced he could do anything. He left the capital at the height of his favour. ‘They consider his eye, the eye omniscient,’ Zavadovsky bitterly told Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky. Yet Harris knew there was a risk: ‘Prince Potemkin will go and take the command of the army, however hazardous such a step may be to the duration of his favour.’24

  Finally, the Prince had a haircut, perhaps to present a more statesmanlike look. ‘The Grand Duchess’, Mikhail Potemkin wrote to Serenissimus, ‘said that, after you’d had your hair cut, your image has changed for the better.’ It is reassuring to see that hairstyles had political significance even two centuries before television.25 All scores settled, all ties cut – mortal, political, financial and hirsute – Potemkin headed south on 6 April 1783, accompanied by a suite including his youngest niece Tatiana Engelhardt, to conquer ‘paradise’.

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  Before attending a war, the Prince was going to attend a christening. The uncle and the sparky little Tatiana arrived at the Belayatserkov estate of Sashenka Branicka for the christening of her newborn child. Bezborodko followed Potemkin’s movements from St Petersburg: ‘We received a message that Prince Potemkin had left Krichev on 27 April,’ the minister told Simon Vorontsov, ‘and having acted as godfather in Belayatserkov, he had departed the very next day…’. Rarely has a christening been watched so carefully by the cabinets of Europe.

  The Prince’s progress was unusually leisurely. He was pursued by the Empress’s increasingly anxious letters. Initially, the partners relished their diplomatic balancing act like a pair of highwaymen planning a hold-up. They suspected Emperor Joseph envied Russian gains from Turkey in 1774, so Catherine told Potemkin, ‘I’ve made my mind up not to count on anybody but myself. When the cake is baked, everyone will want a slice.’ As for Turkey’s friend France, she was as unperturbed by ‘French thunder, or should I sat heat lightning’ as she was unworried about Joseph’s shakiness. ‘Please don’t leave me without information both on you and business.’ Potemkin always knew the worth of the Austrian alliance but thoroughly enjoyed himself
laughing at Joseph and his chancellor’s vacillations: ‘Kaunitz is acting like a snake or a toad,’ he wrote to Catherine on 22 April, but he reassured her: ‘Keep your resolution, matushka, against any approaches, especially internal or external enemies…You shouldn’t rely on the Emperor much but friendly treatment is necessary.’26

  Potemkin’s agents were preparing the Tartars in the Crimea and the Kuban while his troops got ready to fight the Ottomans. Balmain was fixing the easiest piece of the puzzle: on 19 April, he procured the abdication of Shagin Giray in Karasubazaar in the Crimea itself, in return for generous subsidies and possibly another throne. ‘My dove, my Prince,’ exulted Catherine when she heard this news.27 When the Prince finally reached Kherson in early May, he found that, as ever, Russian bureaucracy was incapable of achieving much without his driving energy. ‘Lady Matushka,’ he reported to Catherine in early May, ‘Having reached Kherson, I’m exhausted as a dog and unable to find any sense in the Admiralty. Everything is desolate and there’s not a single proper report.’ Like any country boy, his thoughts about the ministers of Europe were populated with dogs, wolves and toads.

  The Prince now threw himself, in a whirl of activity and anxiety, into seizing the Crimea without outside interference. The archives show this multitalented dynamo at work. Potemkin’s rescripts to his generals – Balmain in the Crimea, Suvorov and Pavel Potemkin in the Kuban – took care of every detail: the Tartars were to be treated kindly; regiments were positioned; artillery was to be brought up in case he needed to besiege Ochakov; a spy was on his way (‘arrest him and send him to me’). When a colonel was too deferential to the deposed Khan, he received a dose of Potemkinian sarcasm: ‘Are you the Khan’s butler or an officer?’ And he specified every step of the swearing of the oath of allegiance.28