Joseph put on his uniform and 'Prince Potemkin took me to court.'5 Serenissimus introduced the two Caesars, who liked each other at once, both dreaming no doubt of Hagia Sofia. They talked politics after dinner, alone except for Potemkin and his niece-mistress Alexandra Engelhardt. Catherine called Joseph 'very intelligent, he loves to talk and he talks very well'. Catherine talked too. She did not formally propose the Greek Project or partition of the Ottoman Empire, but both knew why they were there. She hinted at her Byzantine dreams, for Joseph told his mother that her 'project of establishing an empire in the east rolls around in her head and broods in her souP. The next day, they got on so well at an орёга comique that Joseph had confided plans that 'I don't dare publish' - as Catherine boasted to Grimm. They meant to impress each other. They had to like each other. They made very sure they did.6
There was still opposition to this realignment, not just from Panin and the Prussophile Grand Duke Paul. Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky inquired if these festivities augured an Austrian alliance - a query that was the prerogative of a prickly war hero. The Empress replied, 'it would be advantageous in a Turkish war and Prince Potemkin advised it'. Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky sourly recommended taking her own counsel instead. 'One mind is good,' replied Catherine laconically, 'but two, better.'7 That was the way they worked together.
Joseph, the obsessional inspector, rose early and inspected whatever he could find. Like many a talentless soldier - Peter III and Grand Duke Paul come to mind - he believed that enough inspections and parades would transform him into Frederick the Great. Potemkin politely escorted him to inspect the Russian army, but evidently found his strutting pace tiresome. When Joseph kept mentioning one of Potemkin's 'magnificent regiments', which he had not yet inspected, the Prince did not want to go because of 'bad weather that was expected at any moment'. Finally, Catherine told him like a nagging wife to take Joseph, whatever the weather.
A splendid tent was erected for the two monarchs to view the display of horsemanship while the other spectators, including the King of Poland's nephew Prince Stanislas Poniatowski, to whom we owe this story, watched on horseback. There was a distant roar as Prince Potemkin, at the head of several thousand horsemen, galloped into view. The Prince raised his sword to order the charge when suddenly the horse buckled under the weight of his bulk and collapsed, 'like a centaur on to its hindlegs'. However, he kept his seat during this embarrassing moment and gave his command. The regiment began its charge from a league away and, with the earth trembling, stopped right in front of the imperial tent, in perfect formation. 'I've never seen anything like this done before by a cavalry regiment,' said Joseph. His comments on Potemkin's mount were not recorded.8
On the 30th, Catherine and Joseph left Mogilev and headed in the same carriage to Smolensk, where they temporarily parted. Joseph, with only five attendants, headed off to see Moscow. Catherine was not far from Potemkin's birthplace, Chizhova. There is a legend that Potemkin invited Catherine to visit the village, where with his nephew, Vasily Engelhardt, one of her aides- de-camp and now owner of the village, he greeted her at the gates and showed her the wooden bathhouse where he was born. The well was henceforth named for Catherine. They then split up - the Prince joined Joseph on the road to Moscow, while the Empress returned to Petersburg. 'My good friend,' she wrote to Potemkin, 'it's empty without you.'9
Joseph could not understand Potemkin. 'Prince de Potemkin wants to go to Moscow to explain everything to me,' Joseph told his mother. 'His credit is at an all-time high. Her Majesty even named him at table as her true student ... He has not shown any particularly impressive views so far,' added Joseph, but 'I don't doubt he'll show himself on the journey.' But, once again, Joseph was confounded. While he ceaselessly gave pedantic perorations of his own views, in between brisk expeditions of inspection, Potemkin drifted away into silent reveries. The Prince wanted Joseph's alliance, but he was no sycophant and was not as impressed as he should have been to have the head of the House of Habsburg in his company. Once in Moscow, Joseph told 'very dear mother' that Potemkin 'explains to me the necessary' about some sights but 'to others I go alone'. It was entirely characteristic of Potemkin to doze in bed while the inspector-Emperor rose at dawn for more inspections. By the time they left, Joseph was indignant that Potemkin 'very much took his ease. I've only seen him three times in Moscow and he hasn't spoken to me about business at all.' This man, he concluded, is 'too indolent, too cool to put something into motion - and insouciant'.10
On 18 June Joseph and Potemkin arrived in Petersburg, where the two sides began to explore what sort of friendship they wanted. At Tsarskoe Selo, Potemkin arranged a treat for the Comte de Falkenstein. He recruited Catherine's English gardener from Hackney (originally from Hanover), the appropriately named Bush, to create a special tavern for the Emperor, who loved inns. When Baroness Dimsdale, the English wife of the doctor who inoculated the imperial family, visited a year later, the gardener proudly told her how he had a hung a sign outside the building on which he wrote 'The Count Falkenstein Arms'. He himself wore a placard reading 'Master of the Inn'. Joseph dined at the 'Falkenstein Arms' on boiled beef, soup, ham and the most 'agreeable yet common Russian dishes'. One wonders if the humourless pedant got the joke.11
Throughout the fun, the Russian ministers and the diplomats were on edge as they sensed vast yet so far invisible changes. When the party returned to Petersburg, Joseph encountered Nikita Panin. 'This man', noticed the Kaiser, 'has the air of fearing that one address oneself to his antagonist Prince Potemkin.' By early July, the Prince himself was working between Emperor, Empress and the Austrian envoy, Cobenzl, on the beginning of a more formal relationship 'to re-establish the old confidence and intimacy between the two courts'. Catherine could see the Emperor's Janus-like personality, but, in the semi-public arena of her letters to Grimm, she declared his mind 'the most solid, most profound and most intelligent' she knew. By the time he left, the sides were closer, but nothing was decided. Maria Theresa still reigned in Vienna.11
After Joseph's departure, in the midst of the bidding for Russian alliance from Austria, Prussia and Britain, Daria, Potemkin's estranged mother, died in Moscow. When the Empress heard, she was on her way to Tsarskoe Selo and the Prince was at his nearby summer residence, Ozerki. Catherine insisted on telling him herself, so she changed route and joined him. The loss of a distant parent is often more painful than that of a close one: Potemkin wept copiously because 'this prince', observed Corberon, 'combines the qualities and faults of sensitivity.13 There was an understatement.
Joseph's successful visit truly put the cat among the pigeons. The Prussian party, Panin and Grand Duke Paul, were in disarray. Frederick the Great decided to send a Prussian prince to Petersburg to counteract the Habsburg success. Well before the Mogilev meeting, his envoy Goertz had been discussing such a visit with Potemkin and Panin. Instead of Prince Henry, who now knew Potemkin well, Frederick sent his nephew and heir, Frederick William. This was not a good idea. Joseph, for all his pedantry, was an impressive companion, but Frederick William, who had special instructions from the King to flatter Potemkin, was an oafish and stout Prussian boor without any redeeming social qualities. Prince Henry dutifully wrote to Potemkin asking him to welcome the uncouth nephew - in the tone of a man who reluctantly sends a cheap present but apologizes in advance for its disappointing quality. [33]