Ignoring the rules of civilized adultery, 'alive with passion and reassured by his excess of despotism', Potemkin sometimes forgot that the others were even there and caressed the Princess with 'excessive familiarity' as if she was just a low-born courtesan, instead of one of Russia's grandest noblewomen. The Princess would then laughingly repulse him.88 When her friend Countess Golovina arrived, she was repelled by this tainted passion 'based on vanity'. Virtuous Golovina initially believed Dolgorukaya's insistence that there was no sexual relationship with Serenissimus, who was thirty years older. But then Dolgorukaya could not restrain herself any longer and suddenly 'gave way to a coquetry so shocking' that all was revealed.89 Her husband Vasily Dolgorukay interrupted Potemkin's fun whenever possible. Langeron says Serenissimus seized him by the collar and shouted: 'You miserable man, it's me who gave you all those medals, none of which you deserved! You are nothing but mud and I'll make of you what I wish!' The Frenchman commented, 'this scene would have caused some astonishment in Paris, London or Vienna'.90
On one occasion, maybe during Sard's Ochakov cannonade, the Prince arranged his Ekaterinoslav Grenadiers with their hundred cannons and forty blank cartridges for each soldier in a square around the subterranean palace. The drummers drummed. He cavorted inside the underground palace with the Princess and, at a supreme moment, gave the sign to fire. When her husband heard of this orgasmic salvo, he commented with a shrug, 'What a lot of noise about nothing.'91
Potemkin excelled himself at Princess Dolgorukaya's birthday-dinner. Dessert was served. The guests were amazed to find their crystal goblets filled with diamonds instead of bonbons, which were served to them piled on long spoons. Even the spoilt Princess, sitting beside Potemkin, was impressed. 'It's all for your sake,' he whispered. 'When it's you I fete, what astonishes you?'92
Potemkin's indolence was always more apparent than real, but it served to confirm every foreign prejudice about Russian barbarism. Yet at the very moment when Langeron claimed he spent his time canoodling with Dolgorukaya, the archives attest that he had never worked so hard, or on such a colossal canvas. He was overseeing the building of his towns in such detail that he was specifying the shape of Nikolaev's churchbells, the position of its fountains and the angle of the batteries around its Admiralty; supervising Faleev's building of more gunboats and ships-of-the-line at the Ingul shipyards; reorganizing the war in the Caucasus and Kuban (sacking his commander there, Bibikov, for bungling the march on Anapa through 'incompetence and negligence', and appointing his successors), discussing the strategy of his flotilla with Ribas while ordering him to investigate financial abuse by officers. He also devised a new signalling system for the fleet and training for its gunners.
On Polish matters, he finally agreed with Princess Lubomirska to grant her his Dubrovna estate as part of the payment for Smila.* He was instructing the Russian ambassadors to Warsaw, Stackelberg, then Bulgakov, on Russian policy, and receiving secret reports from Baron d'Asch in Warsaw about the Polish Revolution, dealing with King Stanislas-Augustus' complaints about his Cossacks stealing Polish horses, and discussing his Hetmanate and secret Polish plans with pro-Russian magnates. Serenissimus was constantly reforming and improving the army, adding more light cavalry and ever more Cossacks, but he was also intent on deliberately watering down the aristocratic content of the elite Guards Regiments, promoting foreigners, Cossacks and Old Believers, much to the disgust of the higher nobility. He told Catherine that the officers of the Preobrazhensky had been 'weakened by luxury'. He was therefore involved in a little more than just the seduction of Dolgorukaya. 'My occupations are innumerable,' he told Princess Lubormirska in a slight exaggeration. 'They do not leave me a moment to think about myself.'93
Then there was the international situation. The Poles were arming themselves: if they backed Prussia too closely, 'it will be time to proceed to your plan', Catherine told Grand Hetman Potemkin.94 Worst of all, the British and Prussians were now cooking up a war to stop the Russians. Catherine and Potemkin watched the storm clouds cautiously, though both had cheered up since the Swedish peace. Catherine confided that she was so 'merry' that her dresses were getting tight and needed to be let out. Nevertheless, she missed her consort: 'I often feel, my friend, that on many occasions, I would like to talk to you for a quarter of an hour.'95 When the Prussian minister fainted and hit his head on the throne at Catherine's Swedish peace celebrations, they saw it as a good omen. But the 'extremely tired' Catherine, so like Potemkin, always became ill once the tension broke. Now she almost collapsed. She confided she had a 'strong bout of diarrhoea' and 'colic wind'.96
The Prince was now the bogeyman of Prussians and Polish Patriots, who were assailing his regal ambitions; and, since 1789, there had been moves afoot in the Sejm to annul his indigenat and confiscate his Polish estates, involving him in yet more complex negotiations.97 Perhaps dreaming of retirement and security, he asked Catherine to grant him some southern land he had noticed: 'I've got enough but there is no place I could lay my head pleasantly.' She granted it and sent him a gold coffee set and a diamond ring.98 There was one more burst of negotiating before Potemkin realized that only war would force the Turks to the table while Prussia and England were encouraging them. 'I'm bored by Turkish fairy-tales,' Potemkin told his negotiator, Lazhkarev. 'Explain to them that if they want peace, do it more quickly - or I'll defeat them.'99 It was to be war.
In March, he had assumed personal command of the Black Sea Fleet and
* Potemkin's Dubrovna appears in the history of Napoleon. The Emperor was to stay in Princess Lubomir- ska's manorhouse in November 1812 during the Retreat from Moscow.
appointed Rear-Admiral Fyodor Ushakov as his deputy - another of his outstanding choices. On 24 June, he ordered him to sea to 'confront the enemy'. After inspecting the fleet himself, he sent him out again on 3 July: 'Pray to God He will help us. Put all hopes in Him, cheer up the crews and inspire them for battle .. .'.IO° Ushakov twice defeated the Turks, on 8 July, and 28/29 August off Tendra, blowing up their flagship. It was only seven years since Serenissimus had founded the fleet. 'In the north you've multiplied the Fleet,' Potemkin told Catherine, 'but here you've created it out of nothing.'101 She agreed that it was their baby - 'an enterprise of our own, hence close to our hearts'.102 Potemkin now ordered his flotilla to fight its way into the Danube. 'I've ordered the Sebastopol Fleet to sea,' he told Ribas, 'and to make itself visible to you. You and your flotilla should be ready to join them at the mouth of the Danube ... Inform me of everything.'103 In September, Potemkin rushed down to Nikolaev and the Crimea to inspect the fleets and then ordered the army to advance south towards the Danube.