Potemkin was excited about the idea of a Russian naval base on Minorca, especially since Britain would leave large stores of supplies, worth £2,000,000, which would be at Russia's or Potemkin's disposal. He met Harris daily to discuss it and arranged the envoy's second tite-a-tite with Catherine on 19 December 1780. Before Harris was summoned, the Prince went down to see the Empress for two hours, returning with a 'countenance full of satisfaction and joy'. This was the climax of Harris's friendship with Serenissimus. 'We were sitting alone together very late in the evening when he broke out of a sudden into all the advantages that would arise to Russia ...'. We can hear Potemkin's child-like delight, chimerical dreams and febrile exhilaration, as he lazed on a divan in his rooms, strewn with bottles of Tokay and champagne, cards on green-baize tables: 'He then with the liveliness of his imagination ran on the idea of a Russian fleet stationed at Mahon, of peopling the island with Greeks, that such an acquisition would be a column of the Empress's glory in the middle of the sea.'"
The Empress saw the benefits of Minorca, but she told Potemkin, 'the bride is too beautiful, they are trying to trick me'. It seemed that she could not resist Potemkin's excitement when they were together but would often think better of it when he had gone. Russia, with an unbuilt fleet, could hold it only at Britain's pleasure. She turned down Minorca. She was right: it was too far away and Britain itself soon lost the island.
Potemkin grumbled that Catherine was 'suspicious, timid and narrow- minded', but again this was half play acting. Harris still could not resist hoping that the Prince was committed to England: 'Dined on Wednesday at Tsarskoe Selo with Prince Potemkin ... he talked upon the interests of our two Courts in such a friendly and judicious manner that I regret more than ever his frequent lapses into idleness and dissipation.' He still had not registered that Potemkin's strategic emphasis was not western at all but southerly. Nonetheless, as the Prince secretly negotiated with the Austrians, Sir James kept trying.
Joseph and Catherine had meanwhile agreed the terms of a defensive treaty, including the secret clause aimed at the Sublime Porte - but Potemkin's grand enterprise now hit a snag that was very much of its time. This was the so- called 'alternative', a diplomatic tradition by which monarchs signing a treaty put their name first on one copy and second on the other. The Holy Roman Emperor, as Europe's senior ruler, always signed first on both copies. Now Catherine refused to admit Russia was lower than Rome, while Joseph refused to lower the dignity of the Kaiser by signing second. So, amazingly, the realignment of the East ground to a halt over a matter of protocol.
This was one of those crises where the difference between Catherine and Potemkin was clearest, because, while the Empress was obstinate, the Prince begged her to be flexible and get the treaty signed. The bickering of the partners echoes through their letters and Cobenzl's despatches. Potemkin rushed back and forth between the two sides. Catherine at one point told him to inform Cobenzl 'to give up such nonsense which will imminently stop everything'. Everything did stop.
The tension was not helped by Potemkin's demands for favours for his nieces Alexandra and Ekaterina, both of whom were about to get married. Soon even Catherine's favourite Lanskoy was embroiled in the rows. But Catherine devised an inspired solution for Potemkin to suggest to Joseph: they would each exchange signed letters, setting out their obligation to each other, instead of a treaty.23
The highly strung Prince, faced with this crisis in the scheme of a lifetime, collapsed with 'bad digestion'. Catherine visited Potemkin's apartments to make up and spent the evening with him 'from eight till midnight'. Peace was restored.
Just as the crisis over the Austrian treaty reached its climax, on 10 May 1781, Potemkin ordered Count Mark Voinovich, a Dalmatian sailor, to mount a small invasion of Persia. He was pursuing a secret Persian policy while he was trying to smooth the obstacles from the path of his Greek Project.
This scheme had run parallel to the Austrian negotiations for a full year. Ten days before Joseph II had suggested the Mogilev meeting with Catherine, on 11 January 1780, Serenissimus ordered General Alexander Suvorov, his ablest commander, to assemble an invasion force at Astrakhan. He ordered the ships he had been building at Kazan on the Volga since 1778 to move southwards. The alliance with Austria might take more years to accomplish. In the meantime, Russia would probe the Persian Empire instead of the Ottoman.
The Persian Empire in those days extended round the southern end of the Caspian to include Baku and Derbent, all of today's Azerbaijan, most of
Armenia and half of Georgia. The Armenians and Georgians were Orthodox Christians. As with the Greeks, the Wallachians and the Moldavians, Potemkin longed to liberate his fellow Orthodox and bring them into the Russian Empire. At the same time, he was meeting Armenian representatives in Petersburg, discussing the liberation of the Christians of Armenia from the Persian yoke.
The Prince was one of the few Russian statesmen who understood commerce at that time: he knew that a trading post on the eastern Caspian was just 'thirty days' march from the Persian Gulf, just five weeks to get to India via Kandahar'. In other words, this was Potemkin's first and admittedly minor blow in what came to be called 'The Great Game'. We know that Potemkin was juggling his Greek Project with a Persian one because he talked about it with his British friends. The French and British watched Potemkin's secret Persian plans with interest. Indeed, six years later, the French Ambassador was still trying to discover its secrets.
In February 1780, Sasha Lanskoy had fallen ill and Potemkin delayed his final orders to Suvorov, who was left to kick his heels in drab provincial Astrakhan. Once the anti-Ottoman Greek Project, and Joseph's visit, was confirmed, it would have been foolish for Potemkin to spread his forces too thinly. So the plan was changed. Early in 1781, the Prince cancelled the invasion and instead persuaded Catherine to send a limited expedition, commanded by the thirty-year-old Voinovich, 'a dangerous pirate' from Dalmatia to some, a 'sort of Italian spy of the ministers of Vienna' to others, who had fought for Catherine in the First Russo-Turkish War and temporarily captured Beirut, now the capital of Lebanon.
On 29 June 1781, this tiny naval expedition of three frigates and several transports sailed across the Caspian to found a trading post in Persia and lay the foundations of Catherine's Empire in Central Asia. Persia was in disarray, but the Satrap of the Askabad province across the Caspian, Aga-Mohommed- Khan, was playing many sides against the centre. This chilling and formidable empire-builder, who had been castrated as a boy by his father's enemies, hoped to become shah himself. He welcomed the idea of a Russian trading post on the eastern shores, perhaps to fund his own armies with Russian help.