Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Hercules (Heraclius, or Erakle in Georgian), a remarkable empire-builder, seemed to be the last of the medieval knights alive and well in the century of Voltaire. The name suited the man. Scion of the Bagratid dynasty that provided Georgian monarchs for almost a thousand years, he was a warrior–king who owed his throne to his fighting for the Shah of Persia in India and had managed to create a mini-empire in the backyards of Persia and Turkey. Already an old man, ‘of middle size, with a long face, large eyes and small beard, he had spent his youth’, a traveller remarked, ‘at the Court of Nadir Shah where he contracted a fondness for Persian customs…’. Hercules was ‘renowned for his courage and military skill. When on horseback he always has a pair of loaded pistols at his girdle and, if the enemy is near, a musket flying over a shoulder…’. The other Georgian Tsar, Solomon of Imeretia, was just as striking for, repeatedly overthrown and then restored, he had ‘lived like a wild man for sixteen years in caverns and holes and frequently, by his personal courage, escaped assassination’. He too lived with a musket over his shoulder.³⁵

When the Russians went to war in 1768, Catherine had helped Hercules and Solomon but abandoned them after 1774 to the vengeance of Shah and Sultan. Potemkin was emboldened by his Austrian alliance and decided to increase the pressure on the Ottomans by talking to the Georgians. He corresponded with Hercules, inquiring if he was now at peace with Solomon: he wanted both kingdoms for Russia.

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On 31 December 1782, King Hercules told the ‘Merciful and Serene Prince’ that ‘I am entrusting myself, my children and my Orthodox nation’ to Russia. Serenissimus ordered his cousin, who commanded the Caucasus corps, to conduct negotiations. On 24 July 1783, Pavel Potemkin signed the Treaty of Georgievsk with Hercules on the Prince’s behalf.³⁶

Serenissimus, still encamped at Karasubazaar in the Crimea, was delighted. His Classical-cum-Orthodox exuberance at the news of another magnificent present to the Empress was irresistible:

Lady Matushka, my foster-mother, the Georgia business is also brought to an end. Has any other Sovereign so illuminated an epoch as you have? But it is not just brilliance. You have attached the territories, which Alexander and Pompey just glanced at, to the baton of Russia, and Kherson of Taurida [Crimea] – the source of our Christianity and thus of our humanity – is already in the hands of its daughter.^*2 There’s something mystic about it. You have destroyed the Tartar Horde – the tyrant of Russia in old times and its devastator in recent ones. Today’s new border promises peace to Russia, jealousy to Europe and fear to the Ottoman Porte. So write down this annexation, unempurpled with blood, and order your historians to prepare much ink and much paper.³⁷

Catherine was impressed. Thanking him for his achievements, she ratified the treaty, which confirmed Hercules’ titles, borders and right to coin his own currency. In September Pavel Potemkin built a road out of a bridlepath and galloped in an eight-horse carriage over the Caucasus to Tiflis (now Tbilisi). In November, two Russian battalions entered the capital. The Prince began to supervise the building of forts on Russia’s new border while two Georgian tsareviches, sons of Hercules, set off to live at the cosmopolitan Court of Potemkin.³⁸

And there was more. The failure of Voinovich’s Caspian adventure two years earlier had not discouraged Potemkin’s plans for an anti-Ottoman alliance with Persia. Bezborodko, one of the few who understood Potemkin’s geopolitical schemes, explained that the Prince planned not only this eastern version of the Austrian alliance. He had persuaded Catherine, in the Crimean rescript, to authorize him to push for the Caspian to create two other principalities: one Armenian (today’s Armenia) and another on the Caspian seashores (today’s Azerbaijan) that might be ruled by Shagin Giray, the deposed Crimean Khan.³⁹

By early 1784, Potemkin was negotiating with the Persian Khan in Isfahan about whether he might also join the Empire, giving him a chance to found his Armenian kingdom. ‘Armenia raises its hands to the sacred throne of Your Imperial Majesty asking for deliverance from the Aga’s yoke,’ declared Potemkin to the Empress.⁴⁰ Negotiations with Persian potentates, the Khans of Shusha and Goya, and the Armenians of the Karabak, continued well into 1784.^*3 Potemkin sent an envoy to Isfahan, but the Khan died and the envoy came home. Ultimately, the Persian–Armenian Project led to nothing. For now, his gains were substantial enough.