Orlov and Catherine had drifted apart for a couple of years: we do not know exactly why. She was now forty and he thirty-eight: perhaps they both longed for younger partners. He had never really shared her intellectual interests. Politically she trusted him and they had been through much together: they shared a son. But Orlov had his intellectual limits – Diderot, who later met him in Paris, thought he was like ‘a boiler always boiling but never cooking anything’. Perhaps Potemkin’s company made Orlov’s uncomplicated solidity less attractive to Catherine. Yet it is a mystery why she did not choose Potemkin to replace him. Perhaps after years of repaying her debt to Orlov and his family, she was not yet ready for Potemkin’s dominant and eccentric character. Later, she regretted not summoning him at once.
On the very day that Orlov departed for the south, she later told Potemkin, somebody revealed to her the extent of his infidelities. It was then Catherine admitted that Orlov ‘would have remained for ever, had he not been the first to tire’. This is usually taken at face value but she must at least have suspected his peccadilloes for years. His omnivorous sexual appetites were common knowledge among the ambassadors. ‘Anything is good enough for him,’ Durand claimed. ‘He loves like he eats – he is as happy with a Kalmyk or a Finnish girl as with the prettiest girl at Court. That’s the sort of oaf he is.’ Whatever the real reason, the Empress decided she ‘could no longer trust him’.48
Catherine negotiated a full settlement with Orlov with a generosity that was to be her lodestar in love: he received an annual pension of 150,000 roubles, 100,000 roubles to set up his household, and the neo-Classical Marble Palace, then under construction, 10,000 serfs, all sorts of other treasures and privileges – and two silver services, one for ordinary use and one for special occasions.49 In 1763, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis, Maria Theresa’s consort, had granted him the title prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The title prince, or kniaz in Russian, existed in Russia only among the descendants of ancient royal houses.*3 If eighteenth-century tsars wished to raise someone to prince, they requested the Holy Roman Emperor to create him an imperial prince. Now Catherine allowed her ex-lover to use his title.
In May 1773, Prince Orlov returned to court and resumed his official positions, though Vassilchikov remained favourite – and Potemkin was left, impatiently suspended in limbo.50
* * *
—
It must have been a disappointed Potemkin who returned to the war. At least Catherine promoted him to lieutenant-general on 21 April 1773. The old establishment was envious. ‘The promotion of Potemkin is for me a pill I cannot swallow’, wrote Simon Vorontsov to his brother.51 ‘When he was a lieutenant of the Guards, I was already a colonel and he has certainly served less than me…’.52 Vorontsov decided to resign the moment the campaign was over. There is a feeling of exhaustion and reluctance about this frustrating, bad-tempered campaign, even among the veterans of Rumiantsev’s victories. There was another attempt to negotiate, this time in Bucharest. But the moment had passed.
Once again, Rumiantsev’s tired army, now down to just 35,000 men, struck across the Danube at the obstinate fortress of Silistria. Potemkin ‘was the first to open the campaign in the severe winter with his march to the Danube’, reported the Field-Marshal, ‘and the organizing of a series of raids across to the other bank of the river with his reserve corps. When the army approached the Danube crossing and when the enemy in great numbers of people and artillery consolidated on the opposite bank on the Gurabalsky hills to prevent our passage’, Potemkin, continued Rumiantsev, ‘was the first to get across the river on the boats and to land his forces against the enemy’. The new Lieutenant-General captured the Ottoman camp on 7 June. But Potemkin was already marked as a coming man: a fellow general, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, another of that ubiquitous clan, claimed that ‘timid’ Potemkin ‘never kept order’ during the river crossings and was respected by Rumiantsev only because of his ‘connections at Court’. Yet Dologoruky’s memoirs are notoriously untrustworthy. The demanding Rumiantsev – and his fellow officers – admired and liked Potemkin – and valued him highly during this campaign.53
Silistria’s ‘very strong’ garrison made a powerful sortie against Potemkin. On 12 June, not far from Silistria, he repelled another attack, according to Rumiantsev, taking the enemy artillery. Rumiantsev’s forces approached the familiar walls of Silistria. On 18 June, Lieutenant-General Potemkin, ‘in command of the advance corps, overcame all the biggest difficulties and dangers, driving the enemy away from the fortifications before the town’. On 7 July, he defeated a Turkish corps of 7,000 cavalry. Even in the arms of Vassilchikov, indeed especially in his worthy but dull company, Catherine did not forget Potemkin: when she told Voltaire that June about the strike across the Danube, she mentioned Potemkin’s name for the first time. She was missing him.54
As summer turned to autumn, Potemkin supervised the building of batteries of artillery on the island opposite Silistria. The weather was deteriorating; the Turks showed every sign that they were not going to give up Silistria. ‘Tormented by the severity of the weather and the sallies of the enemy’, Potemkin ‘carried out all the necessary actions to bombard the town, causing fear and damage’.55 When the Russians did penetrate the walls, the Turks fought street by street, house by house. Rumiantsev withdrew. The weather was now freezing. Potemkin’s batteries went back to bombarding the fortress.
At this tense and uncomfortable moment, an imperial courier arrived in Rumianstev’s camp with a letter for Potemkin. Dated 4 December, it speaks for itself:
Sir! Lieutenant-General and Chevalier, you are probably so absorbed by gazing at Silistria that you have no time to read letters and though I do not as yet know whether your bombardment was successful, I am sure that every one of your deeds is done out of zeal for me personally and out of service for our beloved Motherland.
But, since on my part I am most anxious to preserve fervent, brave, clever and talented individuals, I beg you to keep out of danger. When you read this letter, you may well ask yourself why I have written it. To this, I reply: I’ve written this letter so that you should have confirmation of my way of thinking about you, because I have always been your most benevolent,
Catherine.56
In the filthy, freezing and dangerous discomfort of his benighted camp beneath Silistria, this letter must have seemed like a communication from Mount Olympus, and that is what it was. It does not read like a passionate love letter written in a hurry. On the contrary, it is an arch, cautious and carefully drafted declaration that says much and yet nothing. It did not invite Potemkin to the capital, but it is obviously a summons, if not what is popularly known as a ‘come-on’. One suspects he already knew Catherine’s ‘way of thinking’ about him – that she was already in love with the man who had loved her for over a decade. They were already corresponding – hence Catherine implied that Potemkin had not bothered to answer all her letters. His moody insouciance in ignoring imperial letters must have made him all the more attractive, given the sycophantic reverence which surrounded Catherine. The excited Potemkin understood this as the long-awaited invitation to Petersburg.
Moreover, Catherine’s fear for Potemkin’s life was not misplaced. Rumiantsev now had to extract his army from its messy operations at Silistria and get it safely across the Danube. Potemkin was given the honour of the most dangerous role in this operation: ‘When the main part recrossed back over the river,’ remembered Rumiantsev, ‘he was the last to do so because he covered our forces on the enemy’s bank.’57 Nonetheless, it would probably be an understatement to say Potemkin was in a hurry to reach the capital.
Potemkin’s critics, such as Simon Vorontsov and Yuri Dolgoruky, mostly writing after his death when it was fashionable to denounce him, claimed he was an incompetent and a coward.58 Yet, as we have seen, Field-Marshals Golitsyn and Rumiantsev acclaimed his exploits well before he rose to power, and other officers wrote to their friends about his
daring, right up until Silistria. Rumiantsev’s report described Potemkin as ‘one of those military commanders who extolled the glory…of Russian arms by courage and skill’. What is the truth?
Rumiantsev’s complimentary report to Catherine was written after Potemkin’s rise in 1775 and was therefore bound to exaggerate his achievements – but Rumiantsev was not the sort of man to lie. So Potemkin performed heroically in the Turkish War and made his name.
As soon as the army was in winter quarters, he dashed for St Petersburg. His impatience was noticed, suspected and analysed by the many observers of Court intrigues, who asked one another – ‘Why so hastily?’59
Skip Notes
*1 Rumiantsev’s mother was born in 1699 and lived to be eighty-nine. The grandest lady-in-waiting at Court had known the Duke of Marlborough and Louis XIV, remembered Versailles and the day St Petersburg was founded. She liked to boast until her dying day that she was Peter the Great’s last mistress. The dates certainly fitted: the boy was named Peter after the Tsar. His official father, yet another Russian giant, was a provincial boy who became a Count, a General-en-Chef and one of Peter the Great’s hard men: he was the ruffian sent to pursue Peter’s fugitive son, the Tsarevich Alexei, to Austria and bring him back to be tortured to death by his father.
*2 Catherine, in one of the undated love letters usually placed at the official start of their affair in 1774, tells Potemkin that a nameless courtier, perhaps an Orlov ally, has warned her about her behaviour with him and asked permission to send him back to the army, to which she agrees.
*3 Peter the Great did make his favourite Prince Menshikov, but that was an exception. After 1796, Emperor Paul and his successors began to create princes themselves so promiscuously that they ultimately caused an inflationary glut in the prestige of that title.
6
THE HAPPIEST MAN ALIVE
Thy lovely eyes captivated me yet I trembled to say I loved.
G. A. Potemkin to Catherine II, February/March 1774
This clever fellow is as amusing as the very devil.
Catherine II on G. A. Potemkin
So much changed the moment Grigory Alexandrovich [Potemkin] arrived!
Countess Ekaterina Rumiantseva to Count Peter Rumiantsev, 20 March 1774
Lieutenant-General Grigory Potemkin arrived in St Petersburg some time in January 1774 and strode exuberantly into a Court in turmoil, no doubt expecting to be invited into Catherine’s bed and government. If so, he was to be disappointed.
The general moved into a cottage in the courtyard of his brother-in-law Nikolai Samoilov’s house1 and then went to present himself to the Empress. Did she tell him of the disasters and intrigues that swirled around her? Did she beg him to be patient? Potemkin was so enervated with anticipation that he found patience difficult. Ever since he was a child, he had believed he was destined to command and, ever since he joined the Guards, he had been in love with the Empress. He appeared to be all impulse and passion, yet he had learned to wait a little. He appeared frequently at Court and made Catherine laugh. The courtiers knew that Potemkin was suddenly ascending. One day, he was going upstairs at the Winter Palace when he passed a descending Prince Orlov. ‘Any news?’, Potemkin asked Orlov. ‘No,’ Prince Orlov replied, ‘except that I am on the way down and you’re on the way up.’ But nothing happened – at least not in public. The days passed into weeks. The wait was excruciating for someone of Potemkin’s nature. Catherine was in a complicated and sensitive situation, personally and politically, so she moved slowly and cautiously. Vassilchikov remained her official lover – he still lived in his Palace apartments and he presumably shared her bed. However, Vassilchikov was a disappointing companion for Catherine, who found him corrosively dull. Boredom bred unhappiness, then contempt. ‘His caresses only made me cry,’ she told Potemkin afterwards.2 Potemkin became more and more impatient: she had sent him encouraging letters and summoned him. He had come as fast as he could. He had waited for this moment for twelve devoted years. She knew how clever and capable he was: why not let him help her? She had admitted she had feelings for him as he had for her. Why not throw out Vassilchikov?
Still nothing happened. He confronted her about the meaning of the summons. She replied something like: ‘Calme-toi. I am going to think about what you have said and wait until I tell you my decision.’3 Perhaps she wanted him to master the intricacies of her political situation first, perhaps she was teasing him, hoping that their relationship would grow when the moment was right. No one believed in the benefits of careful preparation like Catherine. Most likely, she simply wanted him to force the issue, for she needed his fearless confidence as much as his brains and love. Potemkin learned fast enough why Catherine needed him now: he would have known much of it already. But when he was briefed by the Empress and his friends, he must have realized she was embroiled in her gravest crisis – politically, militarily, romantically – since the day she came to power. It had started, just a few months earlier, in the land of the Yaik Cossacks.
* * *
—
On 17 September 1773, a charismatic Don Cossack appeared before an enthused crowd of Cossacks, Kalmyks and Tartars near Yaiksk, the headquarters of the Yaik Cossacks, thousands of versts south-east of Moscow in another world from Petersburg, and declared that he was the Emperor Peter III, who had not been murdered, but was there to lead them against the evil Catherine. He called her ‘the German, the Devil’s daughter’. The soi-disant ‘Emperor’ was really Emelian Pugachev, a lean, swarthy army deserter with a black goatee beard and brown hair. He did not even look like Peter III. But that did not matter because no one in those remote parts would have recognized the real thing: Pugachev, born around 1740 (almost the same age as Potemkin), had fought in the Seven Years War and at the siege of Bender. He had grievances against the Government, had been arrested and had escaped.
He promised all things to all men – he was the ‘sweet-tongued, merciful, soft-hearted Russian Tsar’. He had already displayed the ‘Tsar’s marks’ on his body to convince these simple angry people that he bore the stigmata they expected of their anointed ruler. He promised them ‘lands, waters, woods, dwellings, grasses, rivers, fishes, bread…’, and anything else he could possibly conjure.
This exceedingly generous political manifesto proved irresistible to many of those who listened to him – but especially to the Yaik Cossacks. The Cossacks were martial communities or Hosts of freemen, outcasts, escaped criminals, runaway serfs, religious dissidents, deserters, bandits of mixed Tartar and Slavic blood who had fled to the frontiers to form armed bands on horseback, living by plunder and rapine, and raising horses. Each Host – the Don, the Yaik, the Zaporogian and their Polish and Siberian brothers – developed its own culture, but they were generally organized as primitive frontier democracies who elected a hetman or ataman in times of war.
For centuries, they played the middle ground, allying with Poland, Lithuania or Sweden against Muscovy, with Russia against the Crimean khans or Ottoman sultans. In the eighteenth century, they remained as likely to rob Russians as Turks but were useful to Russia as border guards and light cavalry. However, the tension between the Russian state and the Cossacks was growing. These Cossacks were concerned with their own problems – they were worried that they were going to be incorporated into the regular army with its drilling discipline and that they would have to shave their beards. The Yaik Cossacks particularly were concerned with recent disputes about fishing rights. A mutiny had been harshly suppressed just a year earlier. But there was more: the Russo-Turkish War was now in its fifth full year and its costs in men and money fell especially on the peasantry. These people wanted to believe in their scraggly ‘Peter III’.
* * *
—
Pugachev ignited this powderkeg. In Russia, the tradition of ‘pretenderism’ was still strong. In the seventeenth-century ‘Time of Troubles’,
the ‘False Dmitri’ had even ruled in Moscow. In a vast primitive country where the tsars were all-powerful and all-good and the simple folk believed them to be touched by God, the image of this kind, Christ-like ruler, wandering among the people and then emerging to save them, was a powerful element of Russian folklore.* This was not as odd as it might sound: England had had its share of pretenders, such as Perkin Warbeck, who in 1490 claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the murdered ‘Princes in the Tower’.
Pretenderism became a historical vocation for a certain breed of mavericks, deserters, Old Believers who lived on the frontiers – outsiders who would claim to be a recently dead or overthrown Tsar. The real Tsar in question had to have ruled for a short enough time to maintain the illusion that, if evil nobles and foreigners had not overthrown him, he would have saved the common people. This made Peter III an ideal candidate. By the end of Catherine’s reign, there had been twenty-four ersatz Peters, but none had the success of Pugachev.
There was one other successful impostor: the False Peter III of Montenegro, in today’s Yugoslavia. At the beginning of the war in 1769, when the fleet was trying to raise Balkan Orthodoxy against the Turks, Catherine had Alexei Orlov send an envoy to the remote Balkan land of Montenegro, which was ruled by a sometime healer, possibly an Italian, named ‘Stephen the Small’ who had united the warlike tribes by claiming to be Peter III. The envoy, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky (later the critic of Potemkin’s soldiering), was amazed to discover that this Montenegran ‘Peter III’, a curly-haired thirty-year-old with a high voice, a white silk tunic and a red cap, had ruled since 1766. Dolgoruky exposed the mountebank. But, unable to control Montenegro, he put him back on his throne, wearing the dignity of a Russian officer’s uniform. Small Stephen ruled Montenegro for another five years until his murder. Indeed, he was one of the best rulers Montenegro ever had.4
Catherine the Great & Potemkin Page 16
