At 6 p.m. on Sunday, 4 February 1789, Serenissimus arrived in Petersburg in the midst of a ball for the birthday of Grand Duke Paul's daughter. Potemkin went straight to his apartments in the house adjoining the Winter Palace. The Empress left the festivities and surprised the Prince as he was changing. She stayed with him a long time.87
MY SUCCESSES ARE YOURS
We shall glorify Potemkin
We shall plait him a bouquet in our hearts.
Russian soldiers' marching song, 'The Moldavian Campaign of 1790'
The favour of the Empress was agreeable; And though the duty waxed a little hard,
Young people at his time of life should be able To come off handsomely in that regard.
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto X: 22
On 11 February 1789, two hundred Ottoman banners from Ochakov were marched past the Winter Palace by a squadron of Life-Guards accompanied by four blaring trumpeters. The parade was followed by a splendid dinner in Potemkin's honour.1 The Prince we see is extremely affable and gracious to everyone - we celebrate his arrival every day,' Zavadovsky sourly told Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky. 'All faith is in one person.'2 Potemkin received another 100,000 roubles for the Taurida Palace, a diamond-studded baton and, most importantly of all, the retirement of Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky, commander of the Ukraine Army. The Prince was appointed commander of both armies.
Potemkin liberally distributed honours to his men: he insisted Suvorov, whom he brought to Petersburg with him, should receive a plume of diamonds for his hat with a 'K' for Kinburn.3 He ordered his favoured general straight down to Rumiantsev's old command, where the Turks were already launching raids.[96] The Prince promised Suvorov his own separate corps.4
The festivities could dispel neither the tension of Russia's international position nor Catherine's private anguish. After the dinner that night, Catherine quarrelled with her favourite, Mamonov. 'Tears,' noted Khrapovitsky, 'the evening was spent in bed.' Mamonov was behaving ominously: he was often 418 the apogee
ill, unfriendly or just absent. When Catherine asked the Prince about it, he replied, 'Haven't you been jealous of Princess Shcherbatova,' (a maid-of- honour) adding, 'Isn't there an affaire d'amourV He then repeated 'a hundred times': 'Oh Matushka, spit on him.'5 Potemkin could hardly have warned her more clearly about her lover. But Catherine, tired and almost sixty, did not listen.
She was so used to hearing what she wanted and so accustomed to her routine with Mamonov that she did not rise to Potemkin's warnings. Besides, Serenissimus turned against every favourite at one time or another. So the trouble with Mamonov continued - 'more tears' recorded Khrapovitsky the next day. Catherine spent all day in bed and her consort came to the rescue. 'After dinner, Prince G.A. Potemkin of Taurida acted as peacemaker' between the Empress and Mamonov.6 But he only papered over the cracks in the relationship. Nor could the Prince solve all of Russia's problems.
The leadership was divided over Russia's worsening position. While it held its own on two fronts against the Turks and Swedes, Russia's power was haemorrhaging in Poland. The Polish 'Four Year Sejm', now encouraged by Berlin, was enthusiastically, if naively, dismantling the Russian protectorate and throwing itself into the arms of Prussia. 'Great hatred'7 of Russia was driving Poland towards reform of its constitution and war with Catherine. Prussia cynically backed the idealism of the Polish 'Patriots' - even though Frederick William's true interest was the partition, not the reform, of Poland.
That was not alclass="underline" Prussia and England were also working hard to keep Sweden and the Turks in the war. Pitt now hoped to recruit Poland to join a 'federative system' against the two imperial powers. This alarmed Vienna, where Joseph's health was failing - he was 'vomiting blood'. The Austrians fretted that Potemkin had become pro-Prussian. All Joseph could suggest to his Ambassador was to flatter the vanity of the 'all-powerful being'.8
So should Russia risk war with Prussia or come to an agreement with it, which meant making peace with the Turks, betraying the shaky Austrians and probably partitioning Poland, which would be compensated with Ottoman territory? This was the Gordian knot that Potemkin's long-awaited arrival was meant to cut.
Potemkin had for some time been advising Catherine to soften her obstinate contempt towards Frederick William. The Council expected him to try to persuade her to cut a deal because he knew that Russia could not fight Prussia and Poland as well as Turkey and Sweden. Since it was not yet time to make peace with the Sultan, Potemkin had to avoid war elsewhere. Serenissimus did not want a return to Panin's Prussian system, so he advised Catherine: 'Provoke the Prussian king to take whatever from Poland.'9 If he lulled the Prussian King into revealing the real greed of his Polish masquerade, the Poles would lose their love for Prussia.10 'Sincerity', he told his ally Bezborodko,11 'is unnecessary in politics.'12
This visit also saw the end of his friendship with the French envoy, Segur, who had supported the criticisms of Ligne and Cobenzl during Ochakov. Segur was hurt: 'Your friendship for me has cooled a bit, mine won't ever imitate it. I'm devoted to you for life.'13 They had been discussing a Quadruple Alliance with the Bourbons and Habsburgs,14 but Britain was ever stronger, France ever weaker. 'I would have advised my Sovereign to ally with Louis the Fat, Louis the Young, Saint Louis, clever Louis XI, wise Louis XII, Louis the Great, even with Louis le Bien-Aime,' Serenissimus teased Segur, 'but not with Louis the Democrat.'15
Poor Segur, playing chess with the Prince, had to endure an entire evening of anti-French comic sketches from his Court 'fool' - Russian nobles still had clowns in their households. But he got his own back by bribing the fool to tease Potemkin about Russian military blunders. The Prince overturned the table and threw the chess pieces at the fleeing buffoon, but he saw Segur's joke and the evening ended 'most gaily'.16
Segur was about to turn detective, trawling the brothels and taverns of Petersburg on behalf of Potemkin's American 'pirate', Jones. In April, just as Potemkin was about to make Jones 'the happiest man alive' with a new job, the American was arrested and accused of paedophile rape. The story has the seedy gleam of a modern sex scandal. Jones appealed to Serenissimus: 'A bad woman has accused me of violating her daughter!' Worse, the daughter was said to be nine years old. He beseeched Potemkin: 'Shall it be said that, in Russia, a wretched woman, who eloped from her husband and family, stole away her daughter, lives here in a house of ill repute and leads a debauched and adulterous life, has found credit enough, on a simple complaint, unsupported by any proof, to affect the honour of a general officer of reputation, who has merited and received the decorations of America, France and this empire?' Jones, once a Parisian Lothario, admitted to Potemkin, 'I love women' and 'the pleasures that one only obtains from that sex, but to get such things by force, is horrible to me'.17