A little boy, the ten-year-old son of Potemkin's valet, witnessed a row and reconciliation that sound like any couple: the Prince banged the table and left the room slamming the door so hard that the glasses jumped. Catherine burst into tears. Then she noticed the alarmed child, who was no doubt wishing he was elsewhere. She smiled through her tears and gesturing at the absent Potemkin told the boy, 'Go and see how he is.' So the child obediently ran along to Serenissimus' apartments and found him sitting at his desk in the study.
'So it's she who sent you?', asked the Prince.
Yes, replied the child, with the open-hearted courage of the innocent; maybe
Prussia: the fat, dull and dim Frederick William of Prussia supposedly spent evenings communicating with the spirits of Marcus Aurelius, Leibniz and the Great Elector, from whom he hoped to learn greatness. If so, the lessons failed.
Serenissimus should go and comfort Her Imperial Majesty because she was crying and apologizing.
'Let her blub!', said Potemkin callously - but he was too soft-hearted to leave her for long. A few minutes later, he calmed down and went to make friends again.38 Such was their personal and political relationship towards the end of their lives.
'Obstinacy', recorded Catherine's secretary on 7 April, 'leads to new war.' But now the prospect of a war on several fronts - since there was every likelihood that Poland and Sweden would join England, Prussia and Turkey - made Catherine blink. She told her staff that there would no more 'beer and porter' - English products - but on 9 April Potemkin and Bezborodko drafted a memorandum to appease Frederick William enough to distract him from the war. 'How can our recruits fight Englishmen?', Potemkin had grumbled. 'Hasn't Swedish cannon-fire tired [anyone] here?' Catherine was indeed tired of shooting: she buckled and agreed secretly to renew the old Prussian treaty, encourage Poland to agree to the cession of Thorn and Danzig to Prussia, and make peace with the Porte, gaining Ochakov and its hinterland.39 But they prepared for war. 'You'll have news of me if they attack on land or sea,' Catherine wrote to a friend in Berlin, deliberately en clair, and offering no concessions.40
The partners did not know that the coalition was collapsing. Before Catherine's proposal reached Berlin, the British faltered. Pitt's Government technically won the three Parliamentary debates on the Ochakov Crisis - but lost the argument. On 18/29 March, Charles James Fox scuppered the weak arguments for the naval expedition against Russia with a rousing speech, asking what British interests were at stake in Ochakov, while Edmund Burke attacked Pitt for protecting the Turks - 'a horde of barbaric Asiatics'. Catherine's envoy, Simon Vorontsov, rallied the Russian 'lobby' of merchants, from Leeds to London, and primed his own armament of hacks. Ink and paper proved mightier than Prussian steel and British gunpowder. Even the navy was against it: Horatio Nelson could not see 'how we are to get at her fleet. Narrow seas and no friendly ports are bad things.' Within days, 'no war with Russia!' was daubed on walls all over the Kingdom. Cabinet support waned. On 5/16 April, Pitt withdrew his ultimatum and despatched a secret emissary, William Fawkener, to Petersburg to find a way out of the debacle that almost cost him his place.41
The Prince and Empress were jubilant. Catherine celebrated by placing Fox's statue in her Cameron Galley between Demosthenes and Cicero. Potemkin celebrated by happily boasting to the humiliated British envoy, Charles Whitworth, that he and Catherine were 'the spoilt children of Providence'. The Ochakov Crisis posed the Eastern Question to the British for the first time, but they were not yet interested in the survival of 'the sick man of Europe'. Jingo would have to wait. Potemkin had been wrong to force Catherine to negotiate - but only with hindsight. His advice had been sensible.
They had just been fortunate. The Prince believed that he and the Empress shared a lucky star: 'in order to be successful', he told the Englishman, 'they only have to desire it'.42
His masquerade ball, which he had been rehearsing day and night since his return, was to mark Russian triumph over Turks, Prussians and Britons - Catherine and Potemkin's defiant celebration of Providence. His servants galloped around St Petersburg delivering this invitation:[102]
The General-Field-Marshal Prince Potemkin of Taurida invites you to render him the honour of coming on Monday, 28th April at six o'clock to his palace on Horse-Guards to the masquerade which will be favoured by the presence of Her Imperial Majesty and Their Imperial Highnesses.43
CARNIVAL AND CRISIS
That Marshal Prince Potemkin gave us a superb party yesterday at which I stayed from seven in the evening until two in the morning when I went home ... Now I am writing to you to improve my headache.
Catherine II to Baron Grimm
At 7 p.m. on 28 April 1791, the imperial coach arrived before the Classical colonnade of the Prince's palace on Horse-Guards, which was illuminated with hundreds of torches. The Empress, wearing a full-length long-sleeved Russian dress with a rich diadem, dismounted slowly in the rain. Potemkin stepped forward to greet her. He wore a scarlet tailcoat and, tossed over his shoulders, a gold and black lace cloak, ornamented with diamonds. He was covered with 'as many diamonds as a man could possibly wear'.1 Behind him, an adjutant held a pillow that bore his hat, which was so weighed down with diamonds that it could barely be worn. Potemkin moved towards her through two lines of footmen, wearing their master's livery of pale-yellow with blue and silver. Each bore a candelabrum. Bathed in this imperial effulgence, Potemkin knelt on one knee before Catherine. She brought him to his feet. He took her hand.
There was a dull roar as 5,000 members of the public, more interested in eating than in observing history, rushed forward to feast on tables of free food and drink. There were swings, roundabouts and even shops where people were given costumes, but now they wanted the food. The Prince had ordered that it should be laid out after the Empress had entered. But a steward mistook a courtier's carriage and started the feast too early. There was almost a riot. For a second, Catherine, nervous of the people as the French Revolution dismantled the Bourbon monarchy, thought 'the honourable public' were stampeding. She was relieved to see they were simply filling their pockets with food to take home.1
The Prince led his Empress towards the door of the Palace, later named the Taurida, which set a new standard for Classical simplicity and grandeur. 'All was gigantic.' That was its clear message: the facade was plain and colossal, designed by the architect Ivan Starov to symbolize Potemkin's power and splendour. Two long wings led out from a domed portico supported by six Doric columns. Inside, the couple entered an anteroom and walked along a receiving line that led into the Cupola or Colonnade Hall, where the Grand Duke Paul and his wife along with 3,000 guests awaited Catherine in their costumes.
'Imagine it if you can!', Catherine dared Grimm. The Hall was the biggest in Europe -21 metres high, its oval shape was 74.5 metres long and 14.9 metres wide, supported by two rows of thirty-six Ionic columns - the 'poetry of columns' that dwarfed the thousands of guests. (It could easily hold 5,000 people.) The floors were inlaid with precious woods and decorated with 'astonishingly huge' white marble vases, the ceilings hung with multi-tiered chandeliers of black crystal - treasures bought from the Duchess of Kingston. At each end was a double row of French windows.3 The entire Hall was so bright it almost appeared to be on fire, illuminated by the massive chandeliers and fifty-six smaller ones each with sixteen candles. Five thousand torches burned. The wind orchestra of 300 musicians and an organ, accompanied by choirs - all hidden in the two galleries - burst into a concert of specially written choral pieces.