The crowds did not need to be forced to see the Empress. No tsar had visited the south since Peter the Great sixty years earlier, so who would not hurry to gawp at not one, but two Caesars? Even in Smolensk, crowds turned out to see the Empress from twenty leagues away.19 Besides, the local peasants surely wished to sell produce to the imperial kitchens. When Lady Craven visited Bakhchisaray a year earlier, a solitary, unknown foreigner, the streets were lined by curious and enthusiastic Tartars and soldiers, so their reaction to the arrival of two monarchs was only slightly greater.20 This is not to say there was no element of show on the banks of the Dnieper: on the contrary, Potemkin beautified and ornamented everything that he could. He was a political impresario who understood the power of presentation and enjoyed the aspect of 'play' in politics, which was entirely self-conscious and deliberate.21
Today, a visit by a head of state is routinely prepared and minutely choreographed in detail, houses repainted, streets cleaned, tramps and whores arrested, banners festooned across streets. Brass-bands play, indigenous schoolchildren dance, and the stops at well-stocked shops are prearranged.22
In many ways, this was the first such visit. Everyone knew that the Amazons, Cossacks and instant English gardens were shows, just as Queen Elisabeth II knows that the Zulu impis with assegai and shields who perform on her trips are not typical inhabitants of Johannesburg.[79] This was what Segur meant when he said that Potemkin had 'an amazing knack of overcoming all obstacles, conquering Nature ... cheating the eye of the dreary uniformity of the long stretches of sandy plain'.23
It is certainly true that, wherever the Empress went, the local officials tidied up the streets, added a lick of paint to buildings and concealed ugliness. In two towns, Kharkov and Tula, not part of Potemkin's show-route, the governors did conceal things from her and may have built false houses.f Thus it is ironic that the sole accounts of 'Potemkin villages' suggest they were not perpetrated by Potemkin at all.24 One could argue that Potemkin was the inventor of modern political spectacle - but not that he was a fairground huckster.
Serenissimus did not need to falsify towns and fleets, as the foreigners, from Miranda to Joseph, testify.25 The Empress could not visit every site and even Potemkin was deceived by his officials, but Kaiser Joseph made a point of inspecting everything and admitted that all was real - though he revealingly added that, if he had not seen things with his own eyes, he would not have believed it.26 Ligne also went out on his own and discovered 'superb establishments in their infancy, growing manufactures, villages with regular streets surrounded with trees and irrigated...'.
Catherine, among other allegations, had been specifically told that Potemkin had ruined the army by reforming the cavalry. When she saw his magnificent light cavalry at Kremenchuk, she felt anger at those who had lied to her, exclaiming to Ligne, 'Wicked people - how they deceived me!'27 This was the reason for Catherine's double joy at finding that the rumours were lies and her keenness to tell her grandsons and officials like Count Bruce what she had seen: 'It is nice to see these places with my own eyes. They warned me against the Crimea, scaring me and dissuading me from seeing it for myself. Having arrived here, I wonder the reason for such rash prejudice.' She even admitted 'her great surprise' that Kherson was so developed. But her assertions did not stop the calumnies against Potemkin.28
'Already the ridiculous story has been circulated that pasteboard villages were painted on our roads ... that the ships and guns were painted, the cavalry horseless,' Ligne wrote to Paris. He touched at once on the reasons for it: 'Even those among the Russians, ... vexed at not being with us, will pretend we have been deceived.' Ligne knew 'very well what legerdemain tricks are', but the achievements were real.29 Potemkin was well aware of the lies spread about him by his enemies. 'And the main thing', he wrote to Catherine afterwards, 'is that malice and jealousy could never harm me in your eyes.' The Empress said he was right: 'You've smacked your enemies' fingers.'30
Their fingers might have been smarting, but that did not stop them for long. Back in Petersburg, Potemkin's enemies were determined to discredit him, despite all the evidence. Overexcited courtiers like Evgraf Chertkov (the witness at Potemkin's wedding to Catherine) did not help by telling everyone, 'I saw miracles, which appeared there only God knows how ... It was like a dream ... Only he [Potemkin] is able to do such things.'31 This was exactly what enemies like Grand Duke Paul wanted to hear.
The Tsarevich summoned Ligne and Segur to question Potemkin's achievements. He was not going to let the truth interfere with his prejudices. 'In spite of all these two travellers have been able to tell him, he does not wish to be persuaded that things are in as good a state as one tells him.'32 When Ligne conceded that Catherine could not see everything, Paul exploded: 'Oh! I know it very well. It's why this bitch of a nation does not want to be governed only by women!'33 This determination, even at Court, explains the persistence of the lies even when eye-witnesses disproved them. The lies were amplified by critics of Russian expansion. It is easy to imagine how, once Potemkin and Catherine were dead, this calculated disinformation became transformed into the gospel of history. Even the 1813 English adaptation of Helbig's work concluded that the 'envy which fastens itself upon great men has magnified what was but show, and diminished what was real'.34 Potemkin was a victim of his own overwhelming triumph. The 'Potemkin Village' is itself one of history's biggest shams.
The new Prince of Taurida sank into one of his bouts of depressed exhaustion, a symptom of the anti-climax after such manic overwork and dazzling success. He remained a few days in Kremenchuk and, in mid-July, set up Court at Kherson, where he fell ill, languishing on his divan, brooding and playing with diamonds. This was not an ideal time for the Prince to be depressed. Since October 1786, he had been in charge of all Ottoman policy and 'arbiter of peace and war'. Now the Ottoman Empire was moving towards war. Ever since the loss of the Crimea and Georgia, and the admission of Russian influence in the Danubian Principalities, the Ottomans had sought the chance to claw back these shameful concessions.35
There was tumult in Istanbul as early as March and into May. 'Here, the public talk only of war,' reported Potemkin's best agent, N. Pisani, a scion of one of Istanbul's professional diplomatic families who interpreted and spied for everyone. Sultan Abdul-Hamid, pressured by his pro-war Grand Vizier, Yusuf-Pasha, and the muftis, was deliberately testing Russian resolve: in 1786, the Hospodar of Moldavia Mavrocordato was driven out; Russia gave him refuge. The Georgian Tsar Hercules was being attacked by the local Pasha. The Turks backed Sheikh Mansour and his Chechens, so Potemkin strengthened his Mozdok Line. The Porte refortified its bases from the Kuban to the Danube, from Anapa and Batumi to Bender and Ismail, and rebuilt its fleets, hence the show of strength off Ochakov on Catherine's visit. The warriors', added Pisani, 'become daily more insolent and commit all sorts of excesses.'36