Just as she was writing to Grimm, a letter arrived bringing dramatic Polish news that meant that Potemkin would have to stay in Petersburg much longer.
On 22 April/3 May 1791, the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania had adopted a new constitution amid tumultuous scenes in the Sejm: one deputy even drew his sword in mid-debate and threatened to kill his son like Abraham and Isaac. Poland's 'May the Third' Revolution created a hereditary monarchy, in which the succession was to be offered to the Elector of Saxony or his daughter, with a strong executive, almost combining the powers of the English Crown and American presidency, and an army. Warsaw celebrated with the slogan 'The King with the Nation'. Those who had thought Poland was beyond help were impressed. 'Happy people,' wrote Burke, 'happy prince.'
The timing was useful for the Russians but unfortunate for the Poles, because the Anglo-Prussian coalition was about to free Russia's hands to deal with their awkward and recalcitrant satellite. Catherine shared Potemkin's disgust for the French Revolution: Republicanism was 'a sickness of the mind' she declared, and she was already cracking down on radical ideas in Russia itself. The Polish Revolution was actually politically conservative, strengthening, not weakening, the monarchy, decreasing, not increasing, the franchise. But Catherine chose to regard it as a Jacobin extension of the French Revolution into her sphere of influence: 'We're perfectly prepared,' Catherine signed off ominously to Grimm, 'and unfortunately, we don't yield to the very devil himself!'11
Potemkin, who was receiving almost daily reports from Bulgakov, Branicki and spies in Warsaw, was watching Poland closely too. He did not like what he saw12 and resolved to take supreme control of Polish policy and put his secret plans into action. He had not yet succeeded in budging Zubov but he probably felt that an Ottoman peace and a Polish success would overpower his critics. So he stayed much longer than he had agreed with Catherine, to discuss Poland, which severely strained their partnership. But, before they could turn on Poland, they had to fight the Turks to a settlement and negotiate their way out of the Ochakov Crisis with Pitt's emissary, Fawkener, who was about to arrive.
'If you want to take the stone from my heart, if you want to calm the spasms,' Catherine told Potemkin in early May, 'then send couriers to the armies quickly and let land and sea forces start operations ...' - otherwise they would never get the peace both wanted.13 The Prince, in one of his moods of euphoric creativity, fired off orders to his forces while founding new settlements across the south. On n May, he ordered Admiral Ushakov to put to sea and pursue the enemy; Repnin, commanding the main army in his absence, to strike decisively across the Danube to destroy any concentration of Turkish forces; and Gudovich, commanding the Kuban corps, to take the strongest Ottoman fortress in those parts - Anapa.14 Meanwhile the partners worked out their Polish plans.
On 16 May, when the Anglo-Prussian crisis was still unsettled. Catherine signed her first rescript to Potemkin on Poland. The Prince could intervene only if the Prussians moved into Poland, in which case Potemkin could offer the Poles the Ottoman principality of Moldavia in return for reversing their Revolution. If they did not take this bait, Potemkin could resort to 'extreme measures' in the traditional way, by arranging a confederation under his Polish allies, Branicki and Potocki. Catherine specifically added that among the 'extreme measures' she approved 'your secret plan' of raising the Orthodox in Kiev, Podolia and Bratslav, under the banner of the 'Grand Hetman' of the Cossacks.15 It is usually claimed that Potemkin did not receive the powers he wanted.16 On the contrary, his powers were potentially vast, though conditional on the real if diminishing likelihood of Prussia and England attacking Russia. (Negotiations with Fawkener had not yet started.)[106] Besides, Potemkin did not 'receive' the rescripts like a schoolboy from a headmistress: the couple worked on them together, correcting one another's drafts, as they always had. The rescripts and correspondence show that Catherine agreed with Potemkin's Cossack and Moldavian schemes, and had done so for more than two years.
Potemkin's Polish schemes are the mystery of his last year: he was weaving a tapestry of overlapping threads that no one has ever managed to untwine. His plans appear protean, shifting and exotic, but the Prince never saw the need to decide on a plan until the last moment. Meanwhile, he would run all of them simultaneously. He had been contemplating the Polish question since he came to power and his Polish policies existed on many different levels, but it is impossible to divorce them from his need for a principality outside
Russian borders. All these plans contain slots for Potemkin's own realm. He had convinced himself that his 'independent' Polish duchy, built around his Smila estates, would be a camouflaged means for Russia to win swathes of central Europe without having to repay the other powers with a second partition of Poland.
There were four Potemkinian projects. There was annexation of Moldavia by Poland. This duchy would have fitted well into the Poland envisaged by his ally, Felix Potocki, in a letter to Potemkin that May: a federal republic of semi-independent hetmanates. Simultaneously, there was the plan for a confederation, led by Branicki and Potocki, that would overthrow the new Constitution and replace it with the old version or a new federal one with Moldavia as a bribe. Even as early as February, Potemkin had been flattering Potocki, inviting him to a meeting 'on the veritable well-being of our common country'.17
Then there was Potemkin's idea of invading Poland as grand hetman of the Black Sea Cossacks to liberate the Orthodox of eastern Poland. This combined his Polish ancestry, his regal ambitions, his enjoyment of drama, his Russian instinct to break the Polish Revolution - and his 'passion for Cossacks'.18 Even before procuring the Hetmanate, Potemkin had envisaged a special Polish role for Black Sea Cossacks, recruiting them in Poland.19 On 6 July 1787, for example, Catherine let him establish four such squadrons from his own Polish villages,10 where he already had his own forces: Smila's mounted and infantry militia.21 Later, Alexandra Branicka explained that he 'wanted to unite the Cossacks with the Polish army and declare himself king of Poland'.21
This now seems the most unlikely of his plans but actually it was feasible. The Orthodox provinces of Podolia and eastern Poland, led by magnates like Felix Potocki and his old-fashioned vision of Polish freedom, were a long way from the sophisticated, Catholic Patriots who dominated the Four-Year Sejm in Warsaw with their new-fangled French concept of liberty (and who hated Potemkin). The mistake is to see this Cossack eruption in isolation: both Catherine and Potemkin clearly saw it as a way to mobilize the Orthodox population to break the power of the Revolution in Warsaw while possibly getting Serenissimus his own realm within a federated Poland, dominated by Russia.
The fourth possibility was the second partition of Poland: Potemkin was never shy about discussing a new partition and often dangled it in front of Prussian envoys; despite the views of nationalistic Polish historians, however, it was his last option. He might have made Poland cede Thorn and Danzig in April to avoid war on two more fronts in April, but that moment had passed. This proudly reborn scion of the szlachta understood that partition destroyed his ancient homeland - 'оиг country' - and it also scuppered his personal base outside Russia. Strategically, it benefited Prussia more than any other state, bringing the Hohenzollerns nearer to Russia. He favoured the Petrine 474 the last dance