Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The Russian infantryman was expected to powder his hair and braid it, which could take twelve hours, and wear the most impractical clothes including tight high boots, stockings, expensive deerskin trousers and the pointed triangular stiff hat that did not protect against the elements. All this ‘could not be better invented to depress the soldier’, wrote Potemkin, who proposed: ‘All foppery must be eliminated.’ His denunciations of the Prussian martial hairstyle are classic Potemkin: ‘About the hairdo. To curl up, to puff, to plait braids – is that soldiers’ business? They have no valets. And what do they need curls for? Everyone must agree it’s healthier to wash and comb the hair than to burden it with powder, fat, flour, hairpins, braids. The soldier’s garb must be like this: up and ready.’ Only months after becoming favourite, he also ordered officers to instruct soldiers without ‘inhumane beatings’ that made service disgusting and unbearable. Instead he recommended ‘affectionate and patient interpretation’. Since 1774, he had been lightening and improving the Russian cavalry too, creating new Dragoon regiments and making the equipment and armour of the Cuirassiers easier to handle.

Years ahead of his time and unaffected by the brutish Prussomania of most Western (and Russian) generals, Potemkin borrowed from the light costumes of the Cossacks instead of the rigid uniforms of Prussian parade grounds to design the new uniform, which was to be named after him: warm comfortable hats that could cover the ears, short haircuts, puttees instead of stockings, loose boots, no ceremonial swords, just bayonets. Potemkin’s new uniform set the standard for ‘the beauty, simplicity and convenience of the garment, accommodated to the climate and spirit of the country’.²²

It was time to leave. He knew that if the Crimean adventure succeeded, ‘I shall soon be seen in another light and then if my conduct is not approved I will retire to the country and never again appear at Court.’²³ But the Prince was dissembling again: he was convinced he could do anything. He left the capital at the height of his favour. ‘They consider his eye, the eye omniscient,’ Zavadovsky bitterly told Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky. Yet Harris knew there was a risk: ‘Prince Potemkin will go and take the command of the army, however hazardous such a step may be to the duration of his favour.’²⁴

Finally, the Prince had a haircut, perhaps to present a more statesmanlike look. ‘The Grand Duchess’, Mikhail Potemkin wrote to Serenissimus, ‘said that, after you’d had your hair cut, your image has changed for the better.’ It is reassuring to see that hairstyles had political significance even two centuries before television.²⁵ All scores settled, all ties cut – mortal, political, financial and hirsute – Potemkin headed south on 6 April 1783, accompanied by a suite including his youngest niece Tatiana Engelhardt, to conquer ‘paradise’.

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Before attending a war, the Prince was going to attend a christening. The uncle and the sparky little Tatiana arrived at the Belayatserkov estate of Sashenka Branicka for the christening of her newborn child. Bezborodko followed Potemkin’s movements from St Petersburg: ‘We received a message that Prince Potemkin had left Krichev on 27 April,’ the minister told Simon Vorontsov, ‘and having acted as godfather in Belayatserkov, he had departed the very next day…’. Rarely has a christening been watched so carefully by the cabinets of Europe.

The Prince’s progress was unusually leisurely. He was pursued by the Empress’s increasingly anxious letters. Initially, the partners relished their diplomatic balancing act like a pair of highwaymen planning a hold-up. They suspected Emperor Joseph envied Russian gains from Turkey in 1774, so Catherine told Potemkin, ‘I’ve made my mind up not to count on anybody but myself. When the cake is baked, everyone will want a slice.’ As for Turkey’s friend France, she was as unperturbed by ‘French thunder, or should I sat heat lightning’ as she was unworried about Joseph’s shakiness. ‘Please don’t leave me without information both on you and business.’ Potemkin always knew the worth of the Austrian alliance but thoroughly enjoyed himself laughing at Joseph and his chancellor’s vacillations: ‘Kaunitz is acting like a snake or a toad,’ he wrote to Catherine on 22 April, but he reassured her: ‘Keep your resolution, matushka, against any approaches, especially internal or external enemies…You shouldn’t rely on the Emperor much but friendly treatment is necessary.’²⁶