Ligne however did not exaggerate Serenissimus' impossible moodiness towards him: they were 'sometimes fine, sometimes bad, arguing at daggers drawn or uncontested favourite, sometimes gambling with him, talking or not talking, staying up until six in the morning'. Ligne said he was the nurse for a 'spoilt child' and a malicious one at that. But Potemkin was equally fed up with Ligne's 'villainous ingratitude', because his Cabinet Noir had opened all Ligne's lying letters to his friends. Serenissimus grumbled to Catherine that the 'jockey diplomatique' could not make up his mind: 'in his eyes, I am sometimes Thersites and sometimes Achilles', the louche Thersites of Troilus and Cressida or the heroic Achilles of the Iliad. It was a love-hate relationship.28
Between conducting adulteries, laughing at dromedaries and playing billiards, Potemkin was achieving a miracle ready for the next year. First he was awaiting his reserves and his levy of recruits, so that gradually an army of about 40,000-50,000 assembled in Elisabethgrad. Across the Mediterranean, Potemkin's officers tried to recruit more men, particularly from Greece and Italy: for example, on the island of Corsica it is said that a young man offered himself for service to a Russian recruiter, General I.A. Zaborovsky. The Corsican demanded Russian rank equivalent to his position in the Garde Nationale Corse. He even wrote to his General Tamara about it.[84] But his request was refused and he remained in France. The name of this abortive recruit to Potemkin's army was Napoleon Bonaparte.29
Serenissimus was creating the Cossack Host he had been planning ever since destroying the Zaporogian Sech. An honorary Zaporogian himself, Potemkin had a 'passion for the Cossacks'. His entourage was filled with them, often old friends from the First Turkish War like Sidor Bely, Chepega and Golavaty. Potemkin believed that the old Cuirassier heavy cavalry was outdated and inconvenient in southern wars. The Cossacks had copied the horsemanship of the Tartars and now Potemkin had his light cavalry emulate the Cossacks. But he also decided to reharness the Zaporogian Cossacks, tempting back their brethren who had defected to the Turks. 'Try to enlist the Cossacks,' he ordered Bely. 'I'll check them all myself.' He also filled up 394 the apogee
their ranks by recruiting new Cossacks from among Poles, Old Believers and even coachmen and petit bourgeois. Overcoming Catherine's caution, he founded the new 'Black Sea and Ekaterinoslav Host' under Bely and his Cossack proteges. They were later renamed the Kuban Cossacks, Russia's second largest Host (the Don remained bigger) until the Revolution. It was Potemkin who made the Cossacks the pillars of the Tsarist regime.30
Potemkin decided to arm the Jews against the Turks. This 'singular project', probably his Jewish friend Zeitlin's idea, spawned in some rabbinical debate with the Prince, started as a cavalry squadron raised among the Jews of his Krichev estate. In December, he created a Jewish regiment called the Israel- ovsky, a word reminiscent of the Izmailovsky Guards. But that was where the similarities ended. Commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, their ultimate aim was to liberate Jerusalem for the Jews, just as Potemkin was to conquer Constantinople for the Orthodox. This sign of Potemkin's unique philo-semitism and of Zeitlin's influence was an awkward idea given Russian and especially Cossack anti-semitism, but it was surely the first attempt by a foreign power to arm the Jews since Titus destroyed the Temple.
The Prince wanted his Israelovsky to be half-infantry, half-cavalry, the latter to be Jewish Cossacks with Zaporogian lances: 'we already have one squadron', observed Ligne to Joseph II. 'Thanks to the shortness of their stirrups, their beards come down to their knees and their fear on horseback makes them like monkeys.' Joseph, who had loosened the restrictions of his own Jews, was probably amused.
By March 1788, thirty-five of these bearded Jewish Cossacks were being trained. Soon there were two squadrons, and Ligne told Potemkin there were plenty more in Poland. Ligne was sceptical, but he admitted he had seen excellent Jewish postmasters and even postillions. The Israelovsky evidently went out on patrol with the cavalry because Ligne wrote that they were as terrified of their own horses as those of the enemy. But five months later Potemkin cancelled the Israelovsky. Ligne joked that he did not dare continue them for fear of 'getting mixed up with the Bible'. So ended this rare experiment that says a great deal about Potemkin's originality and imagination.[85] Ligne thought the Jewish Cossacks were 'too ridiculous'. Instead, Potemkin concentrated on a 'great number of Zaporogians and other Cossack volunteers' pouring in to form the new Black Sea Host.31
The 'Prince-Marshal', as the foreigners called him, was now repairing the damaged fleet while preparing a huge new flotilla to fight in the Liman beneath Ochakov. The Russians were exposed in the Liman. The nature of this shallow estuary meant that Potemkin would have to fight a different sort of war with a different sort of fleet. Potemkin and his admiral Mordvinov turned to the most ingenious shipbuilder they knew: Samuel Bentham's vermicular barges had been left behind and forgotten when the Empress's tour headed for Kherson, leaving him to tag along behind.[86] Now he was needed again, but Serenissimus had forgotten to pay him. He was swiftly paid, but Potemkin was so embarrassed about the debts that he hardly spoke to Bentham. 'By order of His Highness', Sam was enrolled into the navy32 - though 'I had rather continue on terra firma.'33 Potemkin ordered him to create a light flotilla that could fight the Turkish fleet in the Liman.34 While Potemkin appeared to be lazing around at Elisabethgrad having tantrums with Ligne, the archives show that he was driving the creation of this fleet with all his force. 'Fit them up completely as quickly as possible with rigging and all their armaments,' he ordered Mordvinov. 'Don't lose any time over it.'35
Joseph now accepted the casus foederis and launched a bungled preemptive strike against the Ottoman fortress of Belgrade in today's Serbia. The operation collapsed farcically when Austrian commandos, disguised in special uniforms, got lost in the fog. Potemkin was 'furious'36 with Ligne about this military buffoonery, but it let the Russians off the hook. 'It's not very good for them,' Catherine told Potemkin, 'but it is good for us.' Joseph fielded his 245,000 men but went on the defensive across central Europe, which at least restrained the Turks, giving Potemkin time to fight the Battle of the Liman.37
This strategy drove the Austrians to despair. Potemkin was adamant to Catherine that 'nobody can encourage me to undertake something when there's no profit in it and nobody can discourage me when there's a useful opportunity'.38 Ligne tried to persuade him, but Potemkin laughed maliciously: 'Do you think you can come here and lead me by the nose?'39 The Austrian general Prince Frederick Joseph de Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld failed to take Khotin too. A second lunge for Belgrade never even got started. The Austrian war was not going well.40
So Potemkin treated Ligne to two unpublished strategic memoranda that the 'jockey diplomatique' does not mention in his famous letters because they firmly restore the balance of Austro-Russian achievements: 'It seems to me that on several occasions one has not been on guard enough,' and Serenissimus proceeded to explain how the Turks fought: 'They like to envelope their enemy on all sides ...'. Potemkin's advice was to concentrate forces, not spread them out in thin cordons, as Joseph was doing. Whether Joseph ever saw these documents, he did exactly what Potemkin warned him against, with disastrous results.41