Serenissimus decided to hold a ball to defy the Anglo-Prussian coalition and celebrate Ismail. He was supposed to be negotiating the subsidy that Russia would pay Gustavus III for a Russo-Swedish alliance. It was in Potemkin's interest to play this out because Britain was also offering Sweden a subsidy for the use of its ports in a war against Russia. The threat was serious enough for Potemkin to send Suvorov on 25 April to command the corps facing Sweden as a living warning to Gustavus. The Swedish King was trying to auction his services and Britain offered £200,000, but, once the Ochakov Crisis was over, the price would drop. So Potemkin deliberately delayed negotiations by forcing the Swedish envoy, Stedingk, to sit through the rehearsals for his ball at the Taurida Palace.
Thus Stedingk received a theatrical education - but no diplomatic satisfaction at all.23 Serenissimus, covered in diamonds, seemed preoccupied by diamonds - he looked at diamonds, admired the huge diamonds on his miniature portrait of Catherine, played with diamonds until the stones alone became the subject of conversation.24 Potemkin made Stedingk 'walk through fifty apartments, see and admire everything [then] got me into his carriage, talking only of himself, the Crimea & the Black Sea Fleet.' Next, there were more rehearsals.25 When the Prince got bored with his own spectaculars, his face revealed 'disgust boredom lassitude ... that came from having all desires satisfied, when one is blase about everything and there is nothing left to want'.26
Then he gave an order: '200 musicians, placed in the gallery of the great hall, play ... with the two of us as their only audience. The Prince is in Seventh Heaven. 100 people arrive, they dance, they do another quadrille.' The rehearsals started at 3 p.m. and ended at 9 p.m. 'without one moment to fix the attention of the Prince on Sweden. Such Sire', Stedingk sorrowfully told his King, 'is the man who governs the Empire.'27 Potemkin told everyone who would listen that he was not involved in foreign affairs but thought only about his entertainment.28
The real business was conducted in Catherine's apartments, where the partners struggled to counter an imminent Anglo-Prussian war. After two years apart, they were adapting their relationship to his overbearing dominance and her weary obstinacy. On 16/27 March, Pitt sent off his ultimatum to Petersburg, via Berlin. It was a rash act for the usually cautious British Prime Minister, but thirty-nine ships-of-the-line and 88,000 Prussians were no idle threat. The Empress was determined that there would be no concessions to the Prussians and the English.
In their struggle to find a way out of the trap, Potemkin and Catherine even turned to the leading statesman of the hated French Revolution, Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau. Potemkin thought 'France has gone mad,' and Catherine believed Mirabeau should be hanged, not from just one gallows, but many - and then 'broken on the wheel'. But it was fitting that Potemkin should be in secret contact with Mirabeau, who was his only
European equal in terms of eccentric brilliance, physical scale and extravagant debauchery. (Ironically Mirabeau's father once muttered about his son: 'I know of nobody but the Empress of Russia for whom this man would make a suitable match.') The Prince paid fat bribes to 'Mirabobtcha', as he nicknamed him, in an attempt to persuade France to join Russia against Britain (while in fact Mirabeau advocated entente with London). Mirabeau, already bribed generously by the beleaguered Louis XVI, simply 'consumed' Potemkin's money to pay for his magnificent lifestyle and then fell ill. He died in Paris on 19 March/2 April 1791 - the day after Nassau's ball for Potemkin/9 Serenissimus knew that Russia simply could not fight the Triple Alliance and Poland as well as the Turks. So while he prepared the army for a broader war, placing corps on the Dvina and Kiev ready to advance across Poland into Prussia, he was prepared to buy off Frederick William to give Russia a free hand with the Turks and Poles. Catherine did not want to surrender to the coalition. This strained their friendship. Stedingk believed that 'even Her Majesty the Empress' was 'secretly jealous' of Serenissimus. Perhaps that was why Catherine said Potemkin did 'everything she let him do\ Stedingk reported that 'the Empress is no longer what she was ... Age and infirmities have rendered her less capable.' It was now easier to trick her, appeal to her vanity and mislead her. To paraphrase Lord Acton, absolute power coarsens, and both of them had become coarser - the destiny of statesmen who never leave government. Yet Potemkin proudly still treated her as a woman. 'What do you want?', he told the Swede. 'She is a woman - one's got to manage her. One can't rush anything.'30
Actually, it was less personal than that. She was anxious because there was a real divergence in their views, something that had never happened before. She probably worried that he might win, and undermine her authority. Potemkin was irritated that her pride and obstinacy were threatening all their achievements. Would she surrender to Potemkin's superior knowledge of the military situation?31
The Prince also wanted to remove the Empress's companion, Platon Zubov, who was increasingly involved in intrigues against him. This must have added to the tension. A politician is never so exposed as when he appears invincible, for it unites his enemies, and Potemkin was beset by attempts to undermine him. Deboli recorded that Zubov, Saltykov and Nassau-Siegen were already intriguing against him, even though 'so many attempts against ... Potemkin failed like this one'.31 Yet Zubov was backed by his patron Nikolai Saltykov, Governor of the little Grand Dukes, and therefore connected to Paul, his pro-Prussian circle based at the Gatchina estate, and the Masonic Lodges, particularly the Rosicrucians, linked to Berlin."" Some of these Lodges33 became rallying-points for criticism of the Catherine-Potemkin regime, especially since so many magnates were Masons - and the Prince was not.34 Paul himself, who so hated Potemkin, was in treasonable correspondence with Berlin.35
Catherine and Potemkin now had little time for nostalgic endearments: they locked horns in bouts of argument and reconciliation as they had done since they fell in love seventeen years earlier. Catherine's belief all those years ago that their arguments were 'always about power, not love' was true enough now. When persuasion failed, Potemkin tried to bully her into changing her policy. Catherine resisted tearfully, though her tears were always as manipulative as his tantrums. Her refusal to make friendly noises towards a power that was about to invade an exhausted Russia was surely foolish. Potemkin, who knew the situation on the ground, was not suggesting surrender, merely sensible lulling of Frederick William until they had made peace with the Turks.
Potemkin told Catherine's valet, Zakhar Zotov, that there would have to be a row because of the Empress's postponing of the decision. She would not even correspond with Frederick William. Then Serenissimus muttered angrily about Zubov - why did Mamonov leave his place in such a silly way and not wait for Potemkin for arrange things? If the war became absolutely imminent, Potemkin would protect his Turkish gains and satisfy Prussia with a Polish partition. But partition, which would ruin his subtler plans for Poland, was a last resort.36
Catherine and Potemkin argued for days on end. Catherine wept. Potemkin raged. He bit his nails while the tumult hit Catherine in the bowels. By 22 March, Catherine was ill in bed with 'spasms and strong colic'. Even when they rowed, they still behaved like an old husband and wife: Potemkin suggested she take medicine for her bowels but she insisted on relying 'on nature'. The Prince kept up the pressure.37