Next day at dinner, Catherine was silent, Potemkin sulky - both probably exhausted. Ligne thought he would cheer them up with his naughty escapade. It displeased the Tsarina: 'Gentlemen, this joke was in poor taste.' She had conquered this land and commanded that Islam should be respected. The Tartars were now her subjects under imperial protection. If some of her pages had behaved so childishly, she would have punished them.8
Even the Kaiser was affected by the voluptuous atmosphere. Catherine let Joseph, Ligne and Segur (perhaps as a consolation after their reprimand) watch her audience with a Giray princess. But they were disappointed with this descendant of Genghis: 'her painted eyebrows and shining cosmetics made her look like a piece of china in spite of her lovely eyes', thought Segur. 'I would have preferred one of her servants,' Joseph told Lacey. The Kaiser was so taken with the beauty of Circassian women that this supposed pillar of the Enlightenment decided to buy one:[78] he gave one Lieutenant Tsiruli money to set off into the Kuban and purchase a 'pretty Circassian woman'. Potemkin approved it. That mission's outcome is unknown. However, Joseph did return to Vienna with what sounds like a different Circassian girl, aged six, whom he bought from a slave-trader.9 She was baptized as Elisabeth Gulesy, was educated at Court, and was left a pension in his will of 1,000 Gulden a year, not bad since Mozart's pension, granted in 1787, was only 800. Later she married a nobleman's majordomo and is lost to history.
On 2 June, Their Imperial Majesties finally parted on the steppes at Kizi- kerman. Joseph headed west towards Vienna, Catherine north towards Moscow. On 8 June, the Empress reached Poltava, the site of Peter the Great's victory over Charles XII of Sweden. Potemkin re-enacted the battle in what Segur called a huge 'animated tableau, living and moving, almost a reality' with 50,000 troops playing Russians and Swedes. Catherine's eyes shone with Petrine pride. Then Serenissimus presented her with the pearl necklace that he had shown Miranda. In return, Catherine issued a charter acclaiming Potemkin's achievements in the south, granted him 100,000 roubles and the new surname title of 'Tavrichevsky' - he was henceforth known as Kniaz Potemkin-Tavrichesky, Prince Potemkin of Taurida.f
'Papa,' she wrote on 9 June, 'I hope that you let me leave tomorrow without big ceremonies.' Next day, on the approaches to Kharkov, the weary pair parted. Catherine, accompanied by Branicka and 'your kitten' Skavronskaya, as well as the 'Pocket Ministers', met her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, in Moscow. When she reached Tsarskoe Selo on 22 July, all the travellers on this magical voyage 'had to return to dry political calculations'.10
The driest of these calculations was the persistent allegation that Potemkin had deceived Catherine: the calumny of the 'Potemkin Village'. As soon as they arrived back, the 'Pocket Ministers' were interrogated by Potemkin's enemies to learn if Kherson, Sebastopol, the flocks and fleets, were real. But the 'Potemkin Village' was invented by a man who had never visited the
south, let alone seen Potemkin's achievements for himself.
Even in the 1770s, malicious rumours had alleged that Potemkin had done nothing in the south. That was manifestly untrue, so now his foes, and those of Russia, whispered that the whole show was a stupendous fraud. The embittered Saxon envoy Georg von Helbig, who was not on the journey, now coined his phrase 'Potemkinsche Dorfer', a concept so suited to political fraud, especially in Russia, that it entered the language to mean 'a sham, a facade, an unreal achievement'. Helbig did not stop at using his clever phrase in his diplomatic despatches but also published a biography, Potemkin der Taurier, in the magazine Minerva of Hamburg, during the 1790s, which was taken up by the enemies of Russia. Later a full version was published in German in 1809, which was expanded and published in French and English in the nineteenth century. It thus laid the foundation of a historical version of Potemkin that was as fabricated and unjust as it claimed his villages to be. It did not fit Serenissimus - but the mud stuck.11
The cruise along the Dnieper provided the basis of the 'Potemkin Villages': Helbig claimed the settlements there were composed of facades - painted screens on pasteboards - that were moved along the river and seen by the Empress five or six times. Helbig wrote that thousands of peasants had been torn from their homes inside Russia and driven along the riverbank at night with their flocks to be ready for the arrival of the Empress next morning - 1,000 villages had been depopulated and many died of hunger during the resulting famine. The foreigners simply saw the same peasants every day.
The accusation of 'Potemkin Villages' had already been alleged years before the trip ever happened. When Kirill Razumovsky visited Kherson in 1782, the very existence of the town was a 'pleasant surprise', evidently because he had been told the project was just a mirage.12 All foreign visitors to the south were warned in Petersburg that it was a big lie: Lady Craven reported, a year before Catherine set off, that 'those at Petersburg who were jealous of Potemkin's merit' told her there was no water in the Crimea - 'his having the Government of Taurida, and commanding the troops in it, may have caused the invention of 1000 ill-natured lies about this new country ... to lessen the share of praise, that is his due'.13 The Empress had been told for years - whether by the Heir's circle or by envious courtiers - that Potemkin was inventing his achievements. Garnovsky reported to the Prince, before Catherine departed, that she was being told that she would see only painted screens, not real buildings. In Kiev, the stories became more insistent. One of the reasons Catherine was so keen on the trip was surely to check on things for herself: when Potemkin tried to delay her departure from Kiev because arrangements were not complete, she told her secretary Khrapovitsky that she wanted to see for herself 'in spite of its non-readiness'.14
There is absolutely no evidence in Potemkin's own orders or in the accounts of eye-witnesses for the 'Potemkin Villages'. He certainly began his preparations for Catherine's visit as early as 1784, so it is not necessary for us to believe that the whole show was created overnight: that year, General Kahov- sky reported that palaces had been built or old houses redecorated for her imminent visit. Potemkin used travelling palaces - but most of Catherine's palaces were permanent: the ones at Kherson survived for more than a century afterwards. In Bakhchisaray, the Khan's Palace was to be 'repaired' and 'repainted'. The next year, in a list of improvements across the Crimea from building new salt stores in Perekop to Gould's chestnut-tree 'paradise' in Kaffa, Potemkin was ordering that, in Bakhchisaray, Kahovsky was to build up 'the large street where the Empress will pass' with 'good houses and shops'.15 This order to improve some existing buildings is the nearest the thousands of documents in Potemkin's archives yield as evidence of cosmetic presentation. Miranda is a key, unprejudiced witness because he accompanied Potemkin on his pre-trip inspection, but saw nothing being falsified. On the contrary, this witness testifies to the massive reality of Potemkin's work.
What about the dancing peasants and their herds on the riverbanks? It was simply impossible to move such numbers around in those days, especially at night. Cattle and sheep perish if so driven. Potemkin's inability to conceal the fiasco of the lost kitchen of Kaidak, where he himself had to cook dinner for the two monarchs, is more evidence that he was unlikely to have been able to move thousands of men and animals across vast distances to deceive his guests.16 Nor were these flocks completely new: the nomads there had always kept cattle and sheep. Potemkin added to them and improved their quality: Miranda saw the flocks of sheep on the steppe,17 while, a year earlier, Lady Craven proves that Potemkin did not need to use magic on the riverbanks and steppes: she watched huge, grazing herds of 'horses, cows and sheep approaching, making at once a simple and majestic landscape full of peace and plenty'.18 The flocks were there already. They were real.