In short, I have masses of things to tell you and particularly on the subject we spoke about yesterday between noon and two o'clock; but I do not know if you are in the same mood as yesterday and I don't know either whether your words correspond always to your actions since you promised me several times you would come and you do not come ... I am thinking about you all the time. Oh! La! La! What a long letter I have written to you. Excuse me, I always forget that you don't like it. I'll never do it again.4
Catherine struggled to prevent Potemkin's rise from causing a rift with the Orlovs: 'I ask you - don't do one thing: don't injure and don't try to injure Prince Orlov in my thoughts because that would be ingratitude on your part. Before your arrival there was no one who was praised and loved by him as you.'5
Potemkin now demanded a place in government. The most important positions were war and foreign affairs. Since he had come back as a war hero from the Danube, it was natural for him to choose the War College as his target. As early as 5 March 1774, within a week of his appointment as her adjutant-general, she channelled orders to Zakhar Chernyshev, President of the College of War, Orlov's ally, through Potemkin.6 As ever, the Pugachev Rebellion worked to Potemkin's advantage: all governments require scapegoats for public disasters. Thus Zakhar Chernyshev, who received none of the credit for Rumiantsev's victories, bore the blame for the rampages of Pugachev, and was none too happy about it: 'Count Chernyshev is very anxious and keeps saying he will retire.'7 Ten days after Potemkin had delivered Catherine's messages to Chernyshev, she promoted him to lieutenant-colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards, of which she was colonel. This had been Alexei Orlov's place, so it was a sign of the highest favour - and of the eclipse of the Orlovs. And he became captain of the sixty gorgeously attired Chevaliers-Gardes who patrolled the palaces in silver helmets and breastplates and whose Hussar or Cossack squadrons escorted her carriage.
Potemkin knew that it would be madness to take on all the factions at Court, so he tried 'to be friends with everyone', wrote Countess Rum- iantseva8 - especially Nikita Panin.9 The smug and slothful Panin looked 'more content than before' Potemkin's advent. But Count Solms did not underestimate him: 'I'm only afraid that Potemkin, who has a reputation for being sly and wicked, can benefit by Panin's kindness.'10
The favourite hoped, through Panin, to neutralize the other dangerous element in Catherine's Court - the pug-nosed, punctilious, Prussophile Heir Grand Duke Paul, now twenty, who longed to play a political role befitting his rank. Paul had disliked Prince Orlov, but he was to hate the new favourite even more, because he already sensed that Potemkin would forever exclude him from Court. Potemkin soon crossed him. Paul, a stickler for military discipline a la Prusse, bumped into the favourite when he visited his mother and grumbled about Potemkin's dress. 'My darling,' Catherine told her lover, 'the Grand Duke comes to me on Tuesdays and Fridays ... 9 to 11 o'clock ... No criticism because Count ... Andrei Razumovsky [friend of Grand Duke Paul] goes to see them in the same dress, I don't find him any worse dressed than you ...'." Fortunately, Grand Duke Paul had not encountered Potemkin in one of his half-open bearskins with the pink bandanna, which was enough to alarm anyone.
Panin undertook to stroke the increasingly bitter Tsarevich towards 'clever' Potemkin's side.12 So Potemkin was using Panin, who thought he was using Potemkin. Countess Rumiantseva told her husband that Potemkin's return had changed everything politically - and she was right.13
Potemkin was concentrating on the Pugachev Rebellion. Soon after Catherine and Potemkin had become lovers and political partners, General Alexander Bibikov, setting up his headquarters at Kazan, managed to defeat Pugachev's 9,ooo-strong army on 22 March, raise the sieges of Orenburg, Ufa and Yaiksk and force the impostor to abandon his 'capital' at Berda, outside Orenburg. The favourite suggested the appointment of his cousin, Pavel Sergeievich Potemkin, the son of the man who had tried to persuade his father that he was illegitimate, to head the Secret Commission in Kazan which was to find the cause of the Rebellion - the Turks and the French were the main suspects - and punish the rebels. Potemkin and Catherine ordered Zakhar Chernyshev14 to recall Pavel Potemkin from the Turkish front. Pavel Sergeievich was a very eighteenth-century all-rounder - efficient soldier, gracious courtier, poet and multilingual scholar, the first to translate Rousseau into Russian. When he arrived in Petersburg, Catherine immediately 'told him to join Bibikov' in Kazan.15 Now that Bibikov was so close to throttling the false Peter III and Pavel Potemkin was on his way to handle the post-mortem, the lovers switched their minds to ending the Turkish War.
'Matushka,' Potemkin scrawled as he read through one of Catherine's drafts of the Russian peace terms, 'what do the articles underlined mean?' Underneath, the Empress replied: 'It means that they have already been added and if there is debate, they will not be insisted on .. .'.l6 The moment he arrived in the Empress's counsels, he began working with her on the instructions to be given to Field-Marshal Rumiantsev. At first the courtiers presumed that Potemkin was trying to destroy his former chief. The Potemkin legend claims that throughout his life he was viciously jealous of the few others as talented as himself. This was not so. 'It was said he was unkind to Rumiantsev,' Solms told Frederick, 'but I got to know the opposite - they are friends and he defends him against reproaches.' The Field-Marshal's wife was equally surprised that 'he tries to serve you at every opportunity ... he even favours me.'17
A forceful jolt was required to drive the Turks to the peace table, but Rumiantsev's dwindling army needed reinforcements for his planned attack across the Danube, and the authority to make peace on the spot. In late March, Potemkin persuaded Catherine 'to empower Rumiantsev and so the war was ended', as she put it herself.18 This meant that the traditional Ottoman delaying tactics would not work, because Rumiantsev was given authority to make peace on the spot, within the boundaries defined by Catherine and Potemkin, but without the need to refer back to Petersburg. The Field-Marshal was sent the new peace terms corrected by Potemkin on 10 April. By this time, the Turks had lost their appetite for talking. Ottoman decision-making, agonizingly slow at the best of times, had been delayed by the death of Sultan Mustafa III and the succession of his cautious brother Abdul-Hamid. The Turks were encouraged to keep fighting by the French and probably by the duplicitious Prussians: Frederick, while swallowing his share of the Polish Partition, was still jealous of Russian gains in the south. More than that, Turks were also heartened by the Pugachev Rebellion. So there could be no more peace without war first. Once again, Field-Marshal Rumiantsev prepared to cross the Danube.
Potemkin's first step to power was to join the State Council, the consultative war cabinet created by Catherine in 1768. His rise is always described as quick and effortless. But, contrary to historical cliche, imperial favour did not guarantee him power. Potemkin thought he was ready for the Council. Few agreed with him. Besides, all the other members of the Council were on the First or Second of the Table of Ranks; Potemkin was still on the Third. 'What am I to do? I am not even admitted to the Council. And why not? They won't have it but I'll bring things about,' raged Potemkin, 'with an openness that astonished' the French diplomat Durand.19 He tended to stun most diplomats he encountered with his outspoken asides. This was the first sign to the foreign ambassadors that Potemkin, after barely three months in Catherine's bed, wanted real power and was set on getting it.