Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The Emperor prided himself on perpetually inspecting everything from dawn till dusk. He never understood that inactivity can be masterful – hence the Prince de Ligne’s comment that ‘he governed too much and did not reign enough…’. Ligne understood Joseph well – and adored him: ‘As a man he has the greatest merit…as a prince, he will have continual erections and never be satisfied. His reign will be a continual Priapism.’ Since the death of his father in 1765, Joseph had reigned as Holy Roman Emperor or, as the Germans called it, Kaiser, but had to share power over the Habsburg Monarchy – which encompassed Austria, Hungary, Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands, Tuscany and parts of modern Yugoslavia – with his mother, the formidable, humane and astute Maria Theresa. For all her prudishness and rigid Catholic piety, she had laid the foundations for Joseph’s reforms – but he imposed them so stringently that they first became a joke and then a disaster. He later took steps towards the emancipation of the serfs and the Jews, who no longer had to wear the Yellow Star of David, could worship freely, attend universities and engage in trade. He disdained his nobles; yet his reforms rained on his peoples like baton blows. He could not understand their obstinate ingratitude. When he banned coffins to save wood and time, he was baffled by the outrage that forced him to reverse his decision. ‘God, he even wants to put their souls in uniform,’ exclaimed Mirabeau. ‘That’s the summit of despotism.’

His emotional life was tragic: his talented first wife, Isabella of Parma, preferred her sister-in-law to her husband in what seemed to be a lesbian affair, but he loved her. When she died young after three years of marriage, Joseph, then twenty-two, was inconsolable. ‘I have lost everything. My adored wife, the object of all my tenderness, my only friend is gone…I hardly know if I am still alive.’ Seven years later, his only child, a cherished daughter, died of pleurisy: ‘One thing that I ask you to let me have is her white dimity dressing gown, embroidered with flowers…’. Yet even these sad emotional outbursts were about himself rather than anyone else. He remarried a hideous Wittelsbach heiress, Josepha, to lay claim to her Bavaria, then treated her callously. ‘Her figure is short, thickset and without a vestige of charm,’ he wrote. ‘Her face is covered in spots and pimples. Her teeth are horrible.’

His sex life afterwards alternated between princesses and prostitutes, and, if he thought he might fall in love with a woman, he drained himself of any desire by visiting a whore first. Ligne recalled that he had ‘no idea of good cheer or amusements, neither did he read anything except official papers’. He regarded himself as a model of rational decency and all others with sarcastic disdain. As a man, he was a bloodless husk; as a ruler, ‘the greatest enemy of this prince’, wrote Catherine, ‘was himself’. This was the Kaiser whom Potemkin needed to pull off the greatest achievements of his career.⁴

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On 24 May 1780, the Empress of Russia entered Mogilev through the triumphal arch, escorted by squadrons of Cuirassiers – a sight that impressed even the sardonic Kaiser: ‘It was beautiful – all the Polish nobility on horseback, hussars, cuirassiers, lots of generals…finally she herself in a carriage of two seats with Maid-of-Honour Miss Engelhardt…’. As cannons boomed and bells rang, the Empress, accompanied by Potemkin and Field-Marshal Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky, attended church and then drove to the Governor’s residence. It was the beginning of four days of theatre, song and of course fireworks. No expense was spared to transform this drab provincial capital, gained from Poland only in 1772 and teeming with Poles and Jews, into a town fit for Caesars. The Italian architect Brigonzi had built a special theatre where his compatriot Bonafina sang for the guests.

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 soul’. The next day, they got on so well at an opéra 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