Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

It was a different Prince who returned to Petersburg in late October. He had a mission – and everyone noticed ‘the character and conduct of Prince Potemkin are so materially changed within these six months,’ Harris reported to Lord Grantham, the new Foreign Secretary. ‘He rises early, attends to business, is become not only visible but affable to everybody’.¹²

Serenissimus even dismissed his basse-cour. Major Semple tried to use Potemkin’s protection to squeeze the merchants of Petersburg and extort money from the Duchess of Kingston. When he threatened to send Russian soldiers to her house to get the money, Potemkin exposed the ‘Prince of Swindlers,’ who fled Russia, defrauding merchants all the way home. Little is known about Semple’s subsequent adventures, but Ligne later wrote to Potemkin that he had entertained ‘one of Your Highness’s Englishmen, le Major Semple, who told me he accompanied you to the conquest of the Crimea’. He was convicted of fraud in England, transported in 1795, escaped, then died in prison in London in 1799.¹³ Serenissimus enjoyed his menagerie of mountebanks, learning all he could from them and storing it in his prodigious memory. They used him. But Potemkin always got the better deal.

Now he started to sell his houses, horses, estates, jewels, amassed ‘loads of ready money’, and declared that he wished to retire to Italy. He told Harris he had lost his power and that he had offered Catherine his resignation but she had rejected it. Potemkin was forever threatening resignation – Catherine must have been used to it. Nonetheless, no one was quite sure what was afoot.¹⁴ He even paid his debts.

It seemed as if God was paying Potemkin’s debts too. Prince Orlov had gone mad after the death of his new young wife in June 1781 and wandered ranting, through the corridors of palaces. Nikita Panin had a stroke on 31 March 1783. When these two eclipsed suns, who loathed one another, yet grudgingly admired Potemkin, died within a few days, Catherine thought they would be ‘astonished to meet again in the other world’.¹⁵

The Prince was organizing his affairs because he was preparing himself for his life’s work in the south. He was in his creative prime when Catherine’s ‘dear master’ got back to Petersburg – ideas whirled out of him as forcefully and picturesquely as sparks from a Catherine wheel. He immediately set to work on her to settle the Crimean problem once and for all. Was Catherine the tough, obstinate strategist and Potemkin the cautious tactician, as historians would claim later? In this case, Potemkin took the tougher line and got his way – but in different cases they took different lines: it is impossible to generalize. When faced with a problem or a risk, the pair argued, shouted, sulked, were reconciled, back and forth, until their joint policy emerged fully formed.

In late November, the Prince explained to Catherine, in a passionate tour de force, why the Crimea, which ‘breaks our border’, had to be taken because the Ottomans ‘could reach our heart’ through it. This had to be done now while there was still time, while the British were still at war with the French and Americans, while Austria was still enthusiastic, while Istanbul was still wracked with riots and plague. In a stream of imperialistic rhetoric and erudite history, he exclaimed:

Imagine the Crimea is Yours and the wart on your nose is no more!…Gracious Lady…You are obliged to raise Russian glory! See who has gained what: France took Corsica, the Austrians without a war took more in Moldavia than we did. There is no power in Europe that has not participated in the carving-up of Asia, Africa, America. Believe me, that doing this will win you immortal glory greater than any other Russian Sovereign ever. This glory will force its way to an even greater one: with the Crimea, dominance over the Black Sea will be achieved.

And he finished: ‘Russia needs paradise.’¹⁶

Catherine hesitated: would it lead to war? Could not they just take the port of Akhtiar instead of the whole Khanate? Potemkin lamented Catherine’s caution to Harris: ‘Here we never look forward or backward and are governed solely by the impulse of the hour…If I was sure of being applauded when I did good or blamed when I did wrong, I should know on what I was to depend…’. Harris at last came in useful when Potemkin extracted his assurance that Britain would not prevent Russian expansion at the cost of the Porte.¹⁷