Potemkin inspected Kherson, Kinburn and the fleets on one of his flying tours and then established his headquarters at Elisabethgrad, where he held his winter Court and planned the coming campaign. But he kept up his inspections: after a thousand versts on the road in icy weather, he complained to Catherine of piles and headaches. But he was achieving miracles in terms of repairing the old fleet and building a new flotilla to fight on the Liman.
Grand Duke Paul declared he wished to fight the Turks and bring his wife to the front. Paul's companionship was a dire prospect for Serenissimus, with the risk that the Heir might try to undermine his command. Nonetheless he agreed in principle. Catherine loathed her son now, comparing him to 'mustard after dinner'. Despite two requests, she managed to put him off, using anything - from crop failure to the Grand Duchess's latest pregnancy - to spare Serenissimus this tedious and dangerous fate. Paul spent the rest of the war drilling his troops at Gatchina 'like a Prussian major, exaggerating the importance of every trivial and minute detail', while tormenting himself with his father's murder and threatening everyone with 'hardness and vengeance' on his accession. He had to bite his lip and congratulate Serenissimus on his victories, but his wife was grateful for Potemkin's kindness to her brothers, who served in his army. As Catherine grew older, Potemkin flattered Paul, who remained sour as ever - 'Heaven and Earth were guilty in his eyes.' He took every opportunity to denounce his mother's partner to anyone who would listen.12
Joseph had not yet accepted the casus foederis of the treaty, but still complained that Potemkin and Rumiantsev were doing nothing. The Russians and the Austrians were watching each other closely: each wanted the other to bear the brunt of the war without losing out on the rewards. Both sides sent spies to watch each other.13
Joseph's spy was the Prince de Ligne, who was ordered to use his friendship with Potemkin to get the Russians to do as much of the fighting as possible. 'You will report to me on a separate piece of paper in French,' Joseph secretly instructed Ligne, 'which will be concealed and placed in an ordinary packet with the envelope addressed carefully: For His Majesty Alone.'14 The 'jockey diplomatique'15 did not know that this fell into the hands of the Russian Cabinet Noir - it remains in Potemkin's archives - but he did notice Serenissimus' reserve when he turned up in Elisabethgrad. 'The Prince de Ligne, whom I love, is now a burden,' Potemkin told Catherine.16 War was the ruin of their friendship.
Elisabethgrad was a godforsaken little garrison-town, forty-seven miles from the Ottoman frontier. 'What weather, what roads, what winter, what Headquarters I found in Elisabeth,' wrote Ligne, who embraced Potemkin and asked, 'When to Ochakov?' This was a ludicrous question given that it was mid-winter and the Austrians, who were as surprised and unprepared as the Russians, had so far not even declared war. 'My God,' replied the still- depressed Potemkin. 'There are 18,000 men in the garrison. I don't even have as many in my army. I lack everything. I'm the unluckiest man if God doesn't help me.' Potemkin listed the Turkish garrisons in the nearby Ottoman fortresses, Akkerman, Bender and Khotin. 'Not a word of truth in all of that,'17 Ligne commented. He was wrong.18 Pisani's reports from Istanbul testified that the fortress had been freshly manned and refortified. [83] Potemkin had no intention of wasting Russian lives to save Austrian reputations: one has the distinct impression that some of his depression was diplomatic madness to distract the Austrians.
Potemkin lived splendidly in the misery of Elisabethgrad in a wooden palace beside the old fortress. Foreign volunteers - Spaniards, Piedmontese, Portuguese and especially French aristocrats - poured into the frozen town along with a 'vile troop of subaltern adventurers'. On 12 January 1788, Roger, Comte de Damas, having run away from France to find gloire, arrived to offer his services. Aged just twenty-three, with a shock of black curls, graceful and fearless, Talleyrand's cousin was the lover of the Marquise de Coigny, a sometime mistress of Ligne whom Marie-Antoinette called 'queen of Paris'. On arrival, he asked for his mistress's friend Ligne. Up in the castle, he was told. Thence he was directed to Potemkin's palace. He passed two guards and entered an immense hall, full of orderlies. This led to a long suite that was as brightly lit as a 'fete in some capital city'.
The first room he saw was full of adjutants awaiting Potemkin; in the second, Sarti conducted his orchestra of horns; in the third, thirty to forty generals surrounded a huge billiard table.19 On the left, Serenissimus gambled with a niece and a general. This Court was 'not inferior to a lot of Sovereigns of Europe'. Russian generals were so servile that, if Potemkin dropped something, twenty of them scrummaged to pick it up.20 The Prince rose to meet Damas, sat him at his side and invited him to dinner with Ligne and his niece at a small table, while the generals ate at a bigger one. From then on, Damas dined with Potemkin every day for three months of luxury and impatience.21 Ligne was the consolation of the foreigners - 'a child in society, Lovelace with the women'. There was no shortage.
Potemkin could never bear war without women. He was soon joined for the winter by a coterie of goddesses, all in their late teens or early twenties, who came to meet their husbands in the army. There was the Russian Aphrodite - Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, wife of an officer and daughter of Prince Fyodor Bariatinsky, one of Catherine's senior courtiers. She was acclaimed for her 'beauty, grace, fine tastes, delicate tact, humour and talent'. Then there was the lissom and wanton Ekaterina Samoilova, wife of Potemkin's nephew and daughter of Prince Sergei Trubetskoi. She was the 'most adorable woman', with whom Ligne was soon in love and writing poems that catch the grimness of life there: 'Dromedaries, horses; Zaporogians, sheep; They're all we meet here.'22 The third of this graceful troika was Pavel Potemkin's wife, Praskovia.23 Segur teased Potemkin from Petersburg on his affair with a girl with 'beautiful black eyes with whom it is claimed you try the Twelve Labours of Hercules'.24 Damas said Potemkin 'subordinated the art of war, the science of politics and the government of the kingdom to his particular passions'.25 This galaxy of Venuses revolved around Potemkin: who was to be the next sultana-in-chief?
Potemkin and Ligne tormented each other: Potemkin was pressuring the Austrians to enter the war 'against our common enemy'.26 Ligne waved one of Joseph's letters, which contained a war plan, and demanded Potemkin's strategy. Potemkin delayed, and after two weeks Ligne claimed he was fobbed off with the statement: 'With the help of God I'll attack everything that is between the Bug and the Dniester.' This was another Ligne lie. In an unpublished letter, Potemkin had quite clearly laid out the Russian plan: 'We'll undertake the siege of Ochakov, while the army of the Ukraine covers Bender, and the Caucasus and Kuban corps would fight the mountain tribes and Ottomans to the east.27