There were consolations of the feminine kind when they were rejoined by the three graces, whom Ligne called 'the most beautiful girls in the Empire'.21 The Prince was falling in love with Pavel Potemkin's wife. Praskovia And- reevna, nee Zakrevskaya, had a bad figure but a 'superb face, skin of dazzling whiteness and beautiful eyes, little intelligence but very self-sufficient'. Her arch notes to Potemkin survive in the archives: 'You mock me, my dear cousin, in telling me as an excuse that you await my orders to come to see me ... I am always charmed.'22 Damas was equally charmed by Potemkin's libidinous niece-by-marriage, the twenty-five-year-old Ekaterina Samoilova. Her portrait by Lampi shows a bold, full-lipped sexuality with jewels in her hair and a turban tottering on the back of her head. When she later had children, the wags joked that her husband, Samoilov, never saw her - but she still provided ample 'proof of her fecundity'.23 After a freezing day in the trenches, Damas, who dashingly sported French and Russian uniform on 4<э8 the apogee
alternate days, visited the ladies' tent: 'I hoped that a more energetic siege would make them surrender more quickly than the town.' He soon succeeded with Samoilova, but was then wounded again. Potemkin consoled his protege by bringing Skavronskaya, another newly arrived sultana, to his sickbed.24 The Prince did not want to deprive Damas of 'seeing one of the prettiest women in Europe'.[94]
The Capitan-Pasha met the Sebastopol Fleet off Fidonise, near the Danube delta, on 3 July and Potemkin's baby passed its first test - just. Ghazi Hassan withdrew and now returned to save Ochakov. The Crocodile delivered supplies and another 1,500 Janissaries for the garrison. Twice the supplies got through - much to the admirals' shame and Potemkin's fury. But the entire Turkish fleet was again cooped up under the walls of Ochakov and therefore neutralized: as ever, there was some method in Potemkin's madness.
On 5 September, the Prince, Nassau, Damas and Ligne sailed into the Liman to examine the Hassan-Pasha Redoubt and discuss Nassau's plan to land 2,000 men under the wall of the lower battery. The Turks opened up with grapeshot and shell. Potemkin sat alone in the stern, with his medals glittering on his chest and an expression of 'cold dignity that was deliberately assumed and truly admirable'.25
Potemkin's entourage, particularly his strange band of neophyte admirals and foreign spies, began to disband with mutual disillusionment. Life at Ochakov became harder. 'We have no water,' wrote Ligne, 'we eat flies and we're a 100 leagues from a market. We only drink wine ... we sleep four hours after dinner.' Bitter winter came early. Ligne burned his carriage for firewood. The camp became 'snow and shit'. Even the Liman was green from the burned bodies of Turks.26
Samuel Bentham, appalled by the stench of decay and dysentery, called war 'an abominable trade'. Potemkin indulgently sent him to the Far Eastf on the sort of mission that appealed to both of them.27 The King of Poland's eyes, Littlepage, stormed off when Potemkin suspected him of trying to undermine Nassau. The little American protested he had never been 'a troublemaker'. Serenissimus soothed him and he went back to Stanislas-Augustus.28 The real victim of this parting of the ways was America's famous sailor John Paul Jones, whose obscure origins meant he was always under pressure to prove himself. His thin-skinned, pedantic behaviour did not endear him to Ser- enissimus. When Nassau was promoted rear-admiral, Jones got into a ludicrous row about his own precedence and salutes - his account gave six reasons why he need not salute Nassau!
Soon anything that went wrong at sea was blamed on poor Jones. Potemkin ordered the American to destroy ships, moored off Ochakov, or at least spike their cannons. Jones tried twice but for some reason did not succeed. Potemkin cancelled the order and assigned it to Anton Golavaty and his beloved Zaporogian Cossacks, who accomplished it. Jones complained rudely to the Prince who replied: 'I assure you Mr Rear-Admiral that in command, I never enter into individual considerations, I give justice when I should render it... As for my orders, I am not obliged to give account of them and I changed these same orders according to circumstance ... I've commanded a long time and I know very well its rules.'29 Serenissimus decided Jones was 'unable to command' and had him recalled by Catherine.30 'I'll eternally regret having had the misfortune to losing your good graces,' Jones told Potemkin on 20 October. 'I dare say it's difficult but very possible to find sea officers of my skill... but you'll never find a man with a heart as susceptible to loyalty with more zeal .. .'.3I At a last interview, Jones bitterly blamed Potemkin for dividing the command in the first place. 'Agreed,' snapped the Prince- Marshal, 'but it's too late now.'32 On 29 October, Jones departed for Petersburg,33 where he soon learned the danger of making powerful enemies.
After another attempt to bombard the town into submission by land and sea, Nassau, irritated by the delay and out of favour as Potemkin discovered his devious manipulations of truth, stormed off to Warsaw. 'His luck didn't hold,' Potemkin told Catherine.34
Joseph's spy Ligne left too. Potemkin wrote him the 'sweetest, tenderest, most naive' goodbye. Ligne apologized for hurting his friend in an unpublished semi-legible note to the Prince - 'Pardon, 1000 Pardons, my Prince' - that has the air of a rejected lover on the eve of parting.35 Potemkin, 'sometimes the best of men', seemed to awaken out of a dream to say goodbye to Ligne: 'he took me in his arms for a long time, repeatedly ran after me, started again and finally let me go with pain'. But when he reached Vienna Ligne told everyone that Ochakov would never be taken and set about ruining Potemkin's reputation.36 So young Roger de Damas lost his two patrons. The Prince offered himself to replace them as 'friend and protector'. Thus Potemkin, who went from 'most perfect graciousness' to 'the most morose rudeness' in seconds, inspired 'gratitude, devotion and hatred at the same moment'.37
Catherine worried about her Prince's glory and consort's comfort: she sent him the commemorative dish and sword for the former, and a jewel and a fur coat for the latter. Potemkin was delighted: 'Thank you, Lady Matushka ...'. The jewels showed 'royal generosity' and the fur displayed 'maternal caring.
And this', he added with feeling, 'is more dear to me than beads and gold.'38
*
The weather at Ochakov and the politics in Europe deteriorated together at the end of the October. The cold was now severe. When Potemkin inspected the trenches, he told the soldiers they did not need to rise at his approach: 'Only try not to lie down before the Turkish cannons.' Soon the sufferings of the army were 'inconceivable' in the snow and ice with temperatures of minus 15 degrees Centigrade. The men rolled up their tents and lived in burrows in the ground that shocked Damas, though actually these zemliankas were the traditional Russian way for the troops to camp in the cold. There was hardly any food, meat or brandy. Potemkin and Damas received the latest news from France. 'Do you think that when your King has assembled the States-General ... he will dine at the hour that pleases him?' Potemkin asked him. 'Hell, he will only eat when they are kind enough to permit it!'
Soon it was so bad that even Samoilova had to go and camp with her husband, who commanded the left wing. This caused her lover Damas considerable inconvenience: 'I was forced to take my chance of being frozen in the snow in order to pay her the attentions she deigned to accept.'39