'capital', Jassy. As the entourage approached, Richelieu noticed the light rising from the town, illuminated by torches of a fete in Potemkin's honour. However, the Prince was reluctant to linger in Jassy.29
Potemkin wanted to return to Petersburg with the prestige of a supreme commander who had won victories in a theatre of war 'making almost a quarter of the globe, everywhere with success'. He may not have had the bloodcurdling, bayoneting dash of Suvorov but, as a strategist and overall military and naval commander, he had not lost a single battle. In a letter to Catherine, he could not resist comparing his victories to those of Prince Eugene of Savoy and Frederick the Great, yet he claimed he was avoiding the sin of pride, after her 'maternal advice in the last campaign'. He looked back at his life and thanked Catherine for her favour, 'which you showed to me from my first youth'. He concluded: 'Since I belong to you, all my wonderful successes belong to you too.'
Catherine and Potemkin were not old, but they were no longer young. They lived on their nerves and the years of power had made them more imperious and more sensitive. Yet they still cared for one another, gently and lovingly. The siege of Ismail had taken a toll on both of them. The partners exchanged news of their illnesses. 'My health is improving,' Catherine wrote, 'I think it's gout which has reached my stomach and bowels but I cure it with pepper and a glass of malaga wine which I drink daily.' He was ill in Jassy but, when he heard about her illness, he agreed with her malaga wine and pepper, but added that she must 'always keep your stomach warm. I kiss your hands, foster-mother.'30 He had been away from Petersburg for almost two years and asked Catherine if he could come home. 'It's extremely necessary for me to be with you for a short time,' he wrote from Jassy on 11 January 1791. Poland was probably the main subject he wanted to discuss with her in person. 'Let me have a look at you.'31
She wanted to see him - Walking's better than writing', she agreed - but she asked him to wait a little. This has been interpreted as the beginning of his fall from grace and her apprehension that he would return to Petersburg to try to remove Zubov. But her letters do not read like that, though there were certainly tensions between them. He was frustrated at her rigidity towards appeasing Prussia. He also knew that, in the capital, the Prussians, the Poles and their friends, the Grand Duke Paul and various Masonic Lodges, were trying to undermine him, claiming he wanted to be king of Poland. He suspected Zubov too was plotting against him. But he remained confident of his eternal 'sacred' ties with the Empress: 'I don't doubt your permanent favour.'32
Catherine certainly did not act as if she was losing the fondness of a lifetime. On the contrary, she showered him with gifts and even bought the Taurida Palace again - for 460,000 roubles - to pay his debts. But an amused Potemkin noticed that the diamonds on the Order of St Andrew, sent by the Empress, 454 the apogee
were fakes, made of crystal - surely a symbol of an increasingly sclerotic Court.33 She simply asked him to wait a few weeks in the south so as not to miss the chance of making peace with the Turks after the triumph of Ismail. Its fall had indeed shattered Istanbul.34
If a peace could be negotiated with the Porte, Russia could afford to turn to the problem of Poland: its Four-Year Sejm was drafting a constitution that it hoped would make it a strong and viable kingdom and therefore a threat to Russia. Potemkin, who dominated Russia's policies towards both Poland and the Porte, proposed to Catherine that they force the Turks to cede Moldavia to Poland and thus turn the Poles against the Prussians.35 But it all depended on the Turks. Now Britain and Prussia threw them a lifeline - the 'Ochakov Crisis'.
Even before the fall of Ismail, the Triple Alliance had been planning to foil Russian aggrandizement. Until now, Prussia had driven the coalition against Russia and it was mainly due to Frederick William's inept, inconsistent diplomacy that more damage had not been done. Now Britain, freed from the Nootka Sound Crisis with Spain, took the lead against Russia for both commercial and political reasons. The worsening of relations between Britain and Russia had begun with Catherine's Armed Neutrality, and the ending of the Anglo-Russian commercial treaty in 1786, followed by the signing of a Franco-Russian one the next year. This led to a feeling that Britain was too dependent on Russian naval supplies and should instead trade more with Poland. Britain was alarmed by Russia's ascendancy over eastern Europe, especially after the fall of Ismail promised a victorious peace with the Turks. William Pitt, the Prime Minister, therefore aimed to create 'a federative system' of alliances with Poland and Prussia, among others, to force Russia to accept a peace based on the status quo ante bellum. If Russia did not agree to give up Ochakov and other gains, it would be attacked by the Royal Navy at sea and Prussia on land. It certainly looked as if Britain was going to war merely to 'pluck a feather from the cap of the Empress'.36
Selim III was unlikely to make peace with Russia when Britain was arming a fleet to bombard Petersburg. The Sultan executed his latest Grand Vizier, reappointed the hawkish Yusuf-Pasha and gathered another army. Pitt and the Prussians prepared their ultimatum, their armies and their warships. The Prince was needed in Petersburg: now he could go home.
On 10 February 1791, he set out from Jassy. It was said that he joked that he was going to Petersburg to remove Zubov and 'extract the tooth' - zub meaning tooth - though, in the midst of the Ochakov Crisis, he had more important matters to discuss. Petersburg waited his arrival with greater apprehension than ever. 'All the ministers are seized with panic,' fearing the Prince, wrote the Swedish envoy Count Curt Stedingk to King Gustavus III on 8 February.37 'Everyone is in agitation' at the prospect of the 'apparition of this phenomenon'. Government stopped: 'No one dares, and no one can, decide anything before the arrival.'38
ismail 455
'Madame,' Stedingk asked the Empress at Court, 'should one believe the gossip that Prince Potemkin will bring peace?'
'I know nothing of it but it's possible,' replied Catherine, adding that Serenissimus was original and very clever and he would do everything he could and that she let him. Then she mused revealingly: 'He loves to prepare me surprises.'
The Court carriages were sent to await his arrival, the roads illuminated with torches nightly for a week. Count Bruce led the welcoming delegation, waiting in a hut by the roadside from Moscow, not even daring to undress. Bezborodko rode out to prearrange tactics with Potemkin.39 Frederick William gathered 88,000 men in East Prussia, Lord Hood amassed an 'armament' of thirty-six ships-of-the-line and twenty-nine smaller vessels at Spithead - and the Prince of Taurida, trailing a dazzling new mistress, prepared for war and for the most extravagant ball in the history of Russia.40
PART EIGHT
The Last Dance
1791
З1
THE BEAUTIFUL GREEK
First, test yourself to see if you are a coward; if you aren't, fortify your innate bravery by spending much time with your enemies. Prince Potemkin's advice to his great-nephew N. N. Raevsky, the future hero