The aristocracy, the boyars, were Rumanians but were overlaid with rich Phanariot dynasties, some of whom were now based in Jassy, where they built their fine neo-Classical palaces. These Greek boyars, who looked like 'monkeys on a horse covered in rubies', lived in Turkish robes and pantaloons, grew their beards, shaved their heads and sported bonnets encircled with fur and rings of pearls. They waved flywhisks, nibbled sherbet and read Voltaire. Their women languished on divans, wearing diamond-infested turbans and short transparent petticoats, their necks and arms covered in gauze with pearls and coins sewn into them. They dangled fan-like chaplets made of diamonds, pearls, coral, lapis lazuli and rare wood. Connoisseurs of femininity like Ligne were fascinated by these 'pretty, tender - and apathetic' princesses whose only flaw was the protuberant belly regarded as a sign of beauty. Ligne claimed that their morals made the Paris of Les Liaisons Dangereuses appear monastic and that the Hospodar let his friends 'visit' the women in his wife's household - but only after a medical check. 'People took each other and left each other, there was neither jealousy nor bad temper.'6
It was not merely the cosmopolitanism and luxury that suited Potemkin, but also the politics. The throne of Moldavia was highly lucrative but extremely dangerous: heads were lost as quickly as fortunes were gained. Ligne overheard the ladies at court sighing, 'here my father was massacred by order of the Porte and here my sister by order of the Hospodar'. This was the battleground of both the Russo-Turkish wars, which placed the Hospodars in an impossible position. They trod a political tightrope between Orthodox God and Moslem Sultan. They had to play a complicated double game. The First Russo-Turkish War had won Russia rights to appoint consuls in these Principalities. One of the major causes of the outbreak of war in 1787 was the Ottoman overthrow of the Moldavian Hospodar, Alexander Mav- rocordato, who was given sanctuary in Russia and sent Potemkin books and requests for money, while writing that 'philosophy alone sustains me'. The impermanence of these Hospodars, their Greek race and the Orthodoxy of the people attracted Potemkin.7
Serenissimus now ruled from Jassy as if he had, at last, found his kingdom. Dacia had been destined for him since the Greek Project of 1782. The rumours of Potemkin's potential crowns became ever more colourful - a Livonian duchy, a Greek kingdom of Morea and even a most Potemkinian project to buy two Italian islands, Lampedusa and Linosa, from the Kingdom of Naples and found an order of knighthood - but a variation on Dacia was much more likely.8 Potemkin 'regarded Moldavia as a domain which belonged to him'.9 While the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia corresponded with Potemkin from the Turkish camp, begging for peace,10 the Prince himself adopted their resplendence, while ruling through a Divan of boyars, under his dynamic Georgian negotiator11 Sergei Lazhkarev.[98] The Turks and Westerners knew that Potemkin wanted Moldavia; he coaxed and charmed the boyars, who12 themselves were almost offering him the throne.13 Their letters at this time thanked him for delivering them 'from the tyranny of the Turks. We beg Your Highness not to lose from your vigilant vision the little interests of our country which will always have Your Highness as Liberator.' Prince Cantacuzino, scion of Byzantine emperors, heralded this 'epoch of felicity - we dare to run to the wise lights of Your Highness, hero of the century'.14
Serenissimus now took the modern step of becoming a press baron. He created, edited and published his own newspaper called Le Courrier de Moldavie. Printed by his own movable printing press, Le Courrier was a tabloid emblazoned with the Moldavian crest that reported international and local news. The articles were moderately liberal, rabidly against the French Revolution and gently supportive of an independent Rumanian realm under Potemkin.15 Some believed he even planned to create a Moldavian army by detaching crack Russian regiments.16 His nephew General Samoilov, who was often with him at this time, states that he would only ever make peace if Moldavia - Daciaf - was granted independence.17
The Prince was never one to allow war, winter or the small matter of a new kingdom to interfere with his pleasures. 'Mister monk, no monkhood,' Catherine teased him in an imperial understatement.18 He resided in the palaces of either Princes Cantacuzino or Ghika and spent hot days in Czerdak in the countryside nearby.'t He was joined by ten mechanics from Tula, twelve carriages of books, twenty jewellers, twenty-three female carpet-makers, 100 embroiderers,19 a mime troupe, his 200 hornplayers (to play Sard's 'Те Deum' to Ochakov, accompanied by the firing of cannons, an idea borrowed by Tchaikovsky for his 1812 Overture), a 3oo-voice choir, a corps de ballet,10 gardener Gould, architect Starov,21 nephews, nieces and his chancellor Popov.
Only his English cooks refused to go,22 so he had to make do with English gardens and French meals - probably a much better idea anyway. But he did receive hampers23 of English delicacies as a consolation. One such consignment - the bill is in his archives - contained smoked salmon, dried salmon, marinated salmon, Dutch herrings, Livonian anchovies, smoked souls, 1am- preys, eels, two barrels of apples, two bottles of mussels, two bottles of tinto, two bottles of Lacrima Christi, two bottles of champagne and six of Hermiatate, three bottles of red burgundy, three of white burgundy, three bottles of Jamaican rum - and more.
'Parties, balls, theatres, ballets were organized ceaselessly.' When the Prince heard that an officer 700 versts away played the violin well, he sent a courier for the fiddler; when he arrived, he listened with pleasure, gave him a gift and sent him straight back again.24 This reflected Potemkin's pre-Napoleonic view that an army marches on its merriment, not its stomach. 'A sad army can never undertake the toughest assignments,' he wrote, 'and it's more likely to suffer illness.'25
The belles of Petersburg trooped down to entertain him and deceive their husbands. Praskovia Potemkina of the flawless skin and perfect face was now firmly esconced as 'favourite sultana',26 and supplicants waited in her antechambers to ask for favours.27 Praskovia and the Prince enjoyed a deep love affair in Jassy. 'You are my pleasure and my priceless treasure, you are God's gift to me,' he wrote, adding that his love expressed itself to her, not in mad passion or drunkenness, but in 'never ending tenderness'. Without her, 'I'm only half of myself ... you are the soul of my soul, my Parashinka.' He always enjoyed choosing dresses for his nieces and designing habits for monks, and Praskovia must have looked fetching in uniforms because he wrote to her: 'Do you know, beautiful sweetheart, you are a Cuirassier in my regiment. The helmet suits you perfectly, everything fits you. Today I shall put a bishop's hat on you ... Do me a favour, my unrivalled beauty, make up a dress of calico and purple satin ...'. He told her which jewels to wear - which to string, which to mount in a diadem. He even designed their imaginary house of love, which reveals the touching originality of this strange, sensitive man: 'I drew you patterns, I brought you diamonds, now I am drawing you a small house and garden in the oriental taste with all the magical luxuries ...'. There would be a big hall, the sound of a fountain. Upstairs, there would be a lighted gallery with 'pictures of Hero and Leander, Apollo and Daphne ... the most ardent poems of Sappho' and an erotic painting of Praskovia herself 'in a white short dress, girded by a delicate lilac belt, open at the breast, hair loose and unpowdered, the chemise held by a ruby ...'. The bed would be surrounded by 'curtains as thin as smoke' in a room with aquamarine glass. 'But the place where luxury will exhaust itself is the bath', which would be surrounded by mirrors and filled with water, scented with rose, lilac, jasmine, and orange'. Serenissimus was 'cheerful when you're cheerful, I'm full up when you're full up'.28