Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

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.

Voinovich’s expedition was an Enlightened mixture of Potemkin’s scientific longing for knowledge, mercantile enthusiasm and purely imperial aggrandizement. The meagre expedition boasted just fifty infantrymen, 600 men in all, and Potemkin’s respected German-Jewish botanist Karl-Ludwig Hablitz, who probably wrote the unsigned account of the Prince’s Persian expedition in the Quai d’Orsay archive. Voinovich was unsuited to such a sensitive role, but the expedition was in any case too small and was now left to its own devices. Probably this was the result of one of the many compromises between Catherine’s caution and Potemkin’s imagination. By the time the expedition set off, both Empress and Prince were firmly concentrating on Tsargrad and Vienna rather than Askabad and Kandahar.

Voinovich had been ordered to use ‘only persuasion’ by the Prince, but on arrival ‘he did precisely the opposite’. When he arrived on the other side of the sea and found Aga-Mohommed camped with his army, Voinovich proved he was as ‘bad a courtier as politician’. The Persian prince was still interested in a Russian trading post and even suggested that his nephew should lead a mission to Petersburg. Voinovich instead had the imprudence to establish a fort, with just twenty cannon, as if his 650 men could possibly defy a Persian army. While he gave fetes for the Persians and ostentatiously fired his cannons, he only managed to alarm the already suspicious locals, who heard that Suvorov was marching through Daghestan with 60,000 men. This piece of disinformation was probably the first British intrigue in the ‘Great Game’ and it worked. Aga-Mohommed decided to rid himself of these inept and obnoxious Russians.

The village chief invited Voinovich and Hablitz to dinner. They had scarcely arrived before the house was surrounded by 600 Persian warriors. Voinovich and Hablitz were given a choice of losing their heads or evacuating the fort and sailing away without delay. They were right to choose the latter since Aga-Mohommed was capable of unbridled savagery: he later blinded the entire male population – 20,000 men – of a town that resisted him. He also managed the rare feat of being the only eunuch in history to found a dynasty: the Qajars, descended from his nephew, ruled Persia until early this century, when they were replaced by the Pahlavis. It took another century before Russia conquered Central Asia.²⁴

The flotilla sailed miserably for home. Potemkin must take the blame for this quixotic expedition that could easily have ended in catastrophe, yet it was his Byzantine style to run an alternative policy just in case anything went wrong in Vienna.²⁵

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It did not. Joseph agreed to sign the secret defensive treaty with the exchange of letters. For six months, Europe believed that the negotiations had collapsed but, secretly on 18 May, Catherine signed her letter to ‘My dear Brother’ – and Joseph reciprocated. She agreed that Russia would aid Austria against Prussia; but, more relevantly, for Potemkin, Joseph promised to defend Russia if it was attacked by the Turks – ‘I am obliged three months after…to declare war…’. Austria therefore underwrote Russia’s peace treaties with Turkey.²⁶ This realignment of Russian policy was Potemkin’s personal triumph.

Catherine and Potemkin enjoyed fooling the international community. French, Prussian and British envoys tossed bribes around to learn what was happening. Harris suspiciously noticed that ‘my friend’ was in ‘high spirits’ but ‘avoided every political subject’. Cobenzl, who knew everything of course, enjoyed himself too. ‘The whole affair’, he told his Emperor, ‘is continuing to be a mystery here for everyone except Prince Potemkin and Bezborodko.’²⁷ It was not long before Joseph realized that Catherine usually got what she wanted. In spite of the priority of the Greek Project, she did not allow the Armed Neutrality to drop and persuaded both Prussia and Austria to sign. ‘What Woman wants, God gives, goes the proverb,’ mused Joseph, ‘and once in their hands, one always goes further than one wants.’ Catherine and Potemkin were exultant: Catherine was so excited by one flattering letter from Joseph that she actually blushed.