Ligne could do nothing but accuse the Prince of the vainglorious pursuit of medals and lying about his victories. When a courier arrived with news of a victory in the Caucasus, Potemkin beamed: 'See if I do nothing! I've just killed 10,000 Circassians, Abyssinians, Imeretians and Georgians and I've already killed 5,000 Turks at Kinburn.' Ligne said this was a lie, but the Prince's generals Tekeli and Pavel Potemkin had won a series of victories across the Kuban in September and November against the Ottoman ally, Sheikh Mansour.42 Ligne simply had no conception of the breadth of Potemkin's command.[87]
It was now Catherine's turn to lose her confidence for a moment and Potemkin's to encourage her in his belief that the two of them were specially blessed. Christ would help her - as He had always done before. There were times', he reassured her, 'when all the escape-routes seem to be blocked. And then all of a sudden, chance intervened. Do rely on Him.' He thanked her for the fur coat she had sent. She missed him - especially in a crisis: 'without you, I feel as though I'm missing a hand and I get into trouble which I'd never get into with you. I keep fearing something is being missed.'43 Later in the spring, she wrote a postscriptum to a short note, thanking him for his reassurances. 'I thought it would be nice to tell you that I love you, my friend, very much and without ceremony.' They were still so close that they usually thought the same way, and even suffered from the same ailments.44
A Polish delegation now arrived in Elisabethgrad: Potemkin kept them waiting for days and then shocked them by receiving them in a dressing gown without breeches. Nonetheless, Potemkin paid serious attention to the problem of Poland. The sprawling Commonwealth was moving towards the so-called 'Four Year Sejm', the long parliament that presided over the Polish Revolution and overthrew the Russian protectorate. This was what Potemkin and King Stanislas-Augustus' proposed alliance might have avoided. 'Make Poland join us in the war,' the Prince urged Catherine.45 He offered the Poles 50,000 rifles to equip Polish forces, which would include 12,000 Polish cavalry to fight the Turks. Potemkin wanted to command some of the Poles himself - 'at least a single brigade. I am as much of a Pole as they are,' he protested, referring to his Smolensk origins and indigenat as a Polish nobleman.
This offer to command Polish troops was not a casual one. He was still developing his flexible plans for dealing with Poland and his own future under Paul, partly based on his new Podolian estates.46 In any case, Catherine distrusted the plan, perhaps nervous about his vast Polish lands and schemes. She would only propose a treaty that specifically preserved the weak, chaotic Polish Constitution that served Russian ends. It was never signed.
There was always comedy with Serenissimus, even in war. When his Cossacks captured four Tartars, the prisoners expected to be killed. But Potemkin cheerfully had them thrown into a barrel of water and then announced they had been baptized. When a half-senile Frenchman arrived, purporting to be a siege expert, the Prince questioned him, only to learn that the sage had forgotten most of his knowledge. 'I should like to peep ... and study the works that I have forgotten again,' said the old man. Potemkin, 'always kind and amiable' to characters, laughed and told him to relax: 'Don't kill yourself with all that reading.. Л47
Samuel Bentham, working under Admiral Mordvinov and General Suvorov at Kherson, threw himself into creating a rowing flotilla, using all his ingenuity.[88] He adapted Catherine's 'cursed' imperial barges into gunboats, but his real work was to renovate a graveyard of old cannon and fit them on to any light boats that he could either convert or construct. 'I flatter myself I am the principal agent, filling out the Galleys and smaller vessels,' he wrote.48
Bentham's masterpiece was to arm his ships with far heavier cannon than usual on most gunboats.49 'The employment of great guns of 36 or even 48 pounds on such small vessels as ships' long boats', Bentham boasted justifiably to his brother, 'was entirely my idea.'50 It was to Potemkin's credit that, when he came to inspect in October, he immediately understood the significance of Bentham's idea and adopted it in the construction of all the frigates and gunboats, including twenty-five Zaporogian chaiki51 being built separately by his factotum Faleev. 'They respect the calibre of guns in the fleet, not the quantity,'52 Potemkin explained to Catherine. He managed to overcome his awkwardness and thank Bentham publicly for all he had done.53 Bentham was delighted.
By the spring, Potemkin had created a heavy-armed light flotilla of about a hundred boats out of almost nothing.54 Even Ligne had to agree that 'it needed a great merit of the Prince to have imagined, created and equipped' the fleet so fast.55 The birth of the Liman fleet - another 'beloved child' - was perhaps the 'most essential service Potemkin rendered to Russia'.56 Who was to command it? Nassau-Siegen arrived at Elisabethgrad in the New Year eager to serve. Potemkin enjoyed Nassau's pedigree - from the bed of the Queen of Tahiti to the raid on Jersey during the American War - but he knew his limitations. 'Almost a sailor',57 he called Nassau - which made him perfect for his almost-fleet in the Liman. On 26 March, he placed Nassau, whose 'bravery' was 'renowned', in command of the rowing flotilla.58
Potemkin inspected and reinspected maniacally: 'The extent of his authority, the fear he inspired and the prompt execution of his wishes made his visits of inspections seldom necessary.'59 By late March, everything was almost ready. 'Then we can begin the dance,' declared Nassau.60 But, just as everything seemed arranged with the command, an American admiral appeared on the Liman.
'Paul Jones has arrived,' Catherine told Grimm on 25 April 1788. 'I saw him today. I think he'll do marvellous things for us.'61 Catherine fantasized that Jones would slice straight through to Constantinople. John Paul Jones, born the son of a gardener on a Scottish island, was the most celebrated naval commander of his day. He is still regarded as one of the founders of the US Navy. His tiny squadron of ships had terrorized the British coast during the War of American Independence: his wildest exploit was to raid the Scottish coast, taking hostage the inhabitants of a country house. This earned him the enviable reputation in America as a hero of liberty, in France as a dashing heart-throb and in England as a despicable pirate. Prints were sold of him; English nannies scared their children with tales of this bloodsoaked ogre. When the War of Independence ended in 1783, Jones, living in Paris, found himself at a loose end. Grimm, Thomas Jefferson and the King of Poland's Virginian, Lewis Littlepage, had all helped direct him to Catherine, who knew that Russia needed sailors - and who could never resist a Western celebrity. Catherine is usually credited with hiring Jones without consulting Potemkin. But the archives show that Potemkin was simultaneously negotiating with him. 'In case this officer is now in France,' he told Simolin, the Russian envoy in Paris on 5 March, 'I ask Your Excellency to get him to come as early as possible so that we can use his talents in the opening of the campaign.'62
Jones duly arrived at Tsarskoe Selo, but Admiral Samuel Greig and the British officers of the Baltic fleet refused to serve with the infamous corsair, so Catherine sent Jones straight down to Elisabethgrad. On 19 May 1788, Potemkin gave Rear-Admiral Pavel Ivanovich Dzones the command of his eleven battleships, while Nassau kept the rowing flotilla.63 Jones was not the only American fighting for Potemkin: Lewis Littlepage, whom the Prince knew from Kiev, arrived as the King of Poland's spy at Russian HQ. At the Battle of the Liman, he commanded a division of gunboats. The Prince appointed Damas, Bentham and another English volunteer, Henry Fanshawe (Potemkin called him 'Fensch'), a gentleman from Lancashire, to command squadrons under Nassau. 'Lieutenant-Colonels Fensch and Bentham finally agreed to serve on board the ships,' Potemkin informed Mordvinov.