The Prince of Taurida now turned his guns and imagination on to Russia's once and future enemy, Poland. The so-called 'Patriots', elated at the prospect of gaining a strong constitution, expelling the Russians and receiving Galicia from Austria, controlled Warsaw. The strain of losing Poland took its toll on Catherine and Potemkin - he suffered hangnail and rheumatism. Catherine sweetly sent him a 'whole pharmacy of medicines' and 'a fox fur coat with a sable hat'.54 If it came to war against Prussia and Poland, 'I will take command in person,' Potemkin told Leopold.55 While the Austrians panicked and asked for Russian assistance, military operations against the Turks were suspended.
Catherine regarded Poland as an enemy to be dealt with when she had the chance, but Potemkin's protean imagination had for some time been evolving a plan to insert a Trojan Horse into the Commonwealth. The Trojan Horse was himself, backed by his Orthodox co-religionists in eastern Poland and by his new Cossack Host. He would raise Orthodox Poland in the Palatinates of Bratslav, Kiev and Podolia (where his huge estates lay) against the Catholic centre, on behalf of Russia, in the Cossack tradition of Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky. So, after taking Bender, he asked Catherine to grant him a new title with special historic resonance: grand hetman.56
'Your plan is very good,' replied the Empress, though she wondered if the Hetmanate would provoke more hatred in the Polish Sejm.57 Nonetheless in January, she appointed him 'Grand Hetman of the Black Sea and Ekaterinoslav Cossack Hosts'. Potemkin was delighted with his Hetmanate and designed a resplendent new uniform in which he posed round Jassy.58 His own extravagance grated on his sometimes coenobitic nature: he had the sensitivity to notice that his poorer officers could not keep up, so he ordered everyone, including himself, to wear plain cloth tunics - much more Spartan, he told Catherine.59 He had become careful to share his glory with the Empress. When she hailed him as 'my Hetman', he replied: 'Of course I'm yours! I can boast that I owe nothing to anyone except you.'60
Potemkin, who already effectively controlled Russian foreign policy towards Austria and Turkey, was taking over Polish policy too. He demanded the sacking of the Russian Ambassador in Warsaw, Stackelberg, whom he called a scared 'rabbit',61 so Catherine appointed Potemkin's ally Bulgakov.62 She knew that Potemkin had his own interests in Poland and remained sensitive to the possibility of his forming an independent duchy out of his lands. He reassured her that 'there's nothing I wish for myself here' and, as for the hetman title, 'if your welfare did not demand it', he did not need a 'phantom that was more comic than distinguished'. Meanwhile he spent the spring building up his own Cossack Host - even persuading some of his Zaporogian bachelors to marry.63
Potemkin's Hetmanate did outrage the Patriots in Warsaw. Rumours of his plans to become king of Poland reached a new intensity. The Prince indignantly denied this ambition to Bezborodko: 'It's forgivable for the King [of Poland] to think I want his place. For me, let the devil be there. What a sin it is to think that I may have other interests than those of the state.'64 Potemkin was probably telling the truth: the crown of Poland was a fool's cap. A Ukrainian or Moldavian duchy loosely attached to Poland was more feasible. Besides, he had long since convinced himself of that statesman's vanity - that what was good for Potemkin was good for Russia.
The French and Polish Revolutions changed the atmosphere at Catherine's Court as well as her foreign policy. She was alarmed by the spread of French ideas - or 'poison' as she called them - and was determined to suppress them in Russia. In May 1790, when Russia was losing its Austrian ally, the Swedish War was critical, and the Prusso-Polish alliance threatened to open a new front, a young nobleman named Alexander Radishchev published an anonymous book, A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow, which was veiled attack on Catherine, serfdom and Potemkin, whom he implied was an Oriental tyrant. However, it was the application of French Revolutionary principles to Russia, not merely the insults about Potemkin, that outraged her. Radishchev was arrested, tried for sedition and lese-majeste - and sentenced to death.
The Prince intervened on the author's behalf, even though the Revolutions had made this a dangerous time to undermine the regime, even though he was personally attacked, and despite the pressure on him. 'I've read the book sent to me. I am not angry ... It seems, Matushka, he's been slandering you too. And you also won't be angry. Your deeds are your shield.' Potemkin's generous response and sense of proportion calmed Catherine. She commuted the sentence and Radishchev was exiled to Siberia. 'The monarch's mercy', wrote the writer's grateful brother on 17 May 1791, 'was obtained by Prince Grigory Alexandrovich.'6*
The Prince was still negotiating with the Grand Vizier. Catherine decided that the demand for an independent Moldavia with its own prince (Potemkin) was excessive, given the Porte's new treaty with Prussia. The ever flexible Prince seamlessly switched policies and proposed instead that Moldavia be given to Poland as a morsel to tempt the Commonwealth back to the Russian fold. He lost nothing because it could still become his private Polish duchy.66 Serenissimus was suffering. 'Anxiety of such uncertainty weakens me: deprived of sleep and food,' he told her, 'I'm worse than a baby in arms.' He did not forget Zubov either: Potemkin loved Catherine's young lover 'more and more, for he pleases you'.67
Once Sultan Selim was committed to fight on, backed by Prussia, the Grand Vizier's peace policy became obsolete. The ex-Capitan-Pasha was too prestigious to kill openly, so the Crocodile of Sea Battles perished mysteriously on 18 March 1790, probably of the Sultan's poison. This alarmed Catherine. 'For God's sake,' she warned Potemkin. 'Be on guard against the Turk ... He may poison you. They use such tricks ... and it's possible the Prussians will give them the opportunity' to exterminate the man 'whom they fear most'.68 Meanwhile, the Turks in Moldavia took the opportunity to defeat Coburg's Austrian army, which provoked a Potemkinian outburst to Catherine that the Austrian Field-Marshal had 'gone like a fool and been thrashed like a whore'. But the inconsistent King of Prussia was shocked when he learned that his new treaty with the Porte committed him to fight Russia and disowned the alliance, recalling his envoy Dietz in disgrace. Frederick William was more interested in fighting the Austrians. In May, he assumed personal command of his army.69
The Habsburgs succumbed to the Prussian threat. Leopold abandoned Joseph's hopes of winning Turkish territory in order to restore order to his own provinces and negotiated a rapprochement with Prussia, therefore withdrawing from the Turkish War. On 16/27 July at Reichenbach, Leopold agreed to the Anglo-Prussian demands of instant armistice on the basis of the status quo ante bellum. Prussia celebrated this victory by raising the stakes: Frederick William ratified Dietz's Prusso-Turkish treaty after all. Russia stood alone in the cold war against Prussia, England and Poland, and in the hot one against Turkey and Sweden.