Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

33 AKV 13: 223–8, Bezborodko to Zavadovsky 17 November 1791, Jassy. As ever with the Prince, the difference between the legend and the truth is marked: the chaos, corruption and destruction of the armies that he left in Jassy, for example, fill all accounts. Yet Count Bezborodko, who always cast a sardonic but just eye on Potemkin, found that the grain magazines were full, the army was in ‘a very good state’, provisions were generous, and the fleet and flotilla were numerous, if not built of the best wood, and that, despite Potemkin’s Cossack obsession, he had to admit ‘the light Cossack forces are in the best state possible’.

34 AAE 20: 362, Langeron. Pushkin quoted in Lopatin, Perepiska p 470. Castera vol 2 p 177. Wiegel vol 1 pp 28–9. Samoilov col 1560. Derzhavin in Segal vol 2 pp 291–2. Ligne, Mélanges vol 7 pp 171–2, Ligne to Comte de Ségur 1 August 1788. On the state of the army: Potemkin undoubtedly allowed his colonels to run their regiments profitably with minimal supervision, though he was now introducing inspectors to stop outrageous abuse. Nor was he remotely interested in Prussian drilling or endless ceremonial. He was said by foreigners (for example, Damas pp 114–16) to discourage all exercises, yet his archives reveal his instructions for training his marine commandos already quoted above. SBVIM vol 4 p 217, where GAP gives training instructions, criticizing officers who teach manoeuvres ‘seldom fit to be used in battle’ and recommends easy marching to walk faster without getting tired and simple training in forming squares, shooting and reloading. GAP simply disdained the slavish and pedantic following of Prussian training and tactics and evolved his own style regardless of Western opinion but based on Tartar, Cossack and Russian traditions. This offended French and German officers – hence Langeron, Damas and Ligne. Finally on the corruption of the Russian army under GAP, it is worth noting that Louis XVI’s army was crippled with corruption and that commissions in the British army, though partially reformed in 1798, were still sold until 1871 when Gladstone abolished them. So GAP’s system was probably no worse than that at Horse-Guards in London.

35 SIRIO 54 (1886): 147–9, Richelieu, ‘Mon voyage’.

36 RA (1879) 1 pp 2–25, Popov to CII 8 October 1791.

37 RGADA 5.131.4–4, CII to Popov ud, November 1791.

38 Engelhardt 1997 pp 97–102. Author’s visit to Golia Monastery in Iaşi, Rumania, October 1999.

39 Khrapovitsky pp 383–5, 387.

40 AKV 18: 36, Prince V. . Kochubey to S. R. Vorontsov 28 July/9 August 1792.

41 Khrapovitsky pp 407–8, 236. Madariaga, Russia p 562.

42 Ligne, Mélanges vol 22 p 82, Ligne to CII 1792. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna p 292. For Popov, see RP 2.1.19 and AKV 8: 58, Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov 28 September 1792, St Petersburg.

43 Rear-Admiral J. P. Jones to Potemkin 13 April 1789, quoted in Otis p 359. Statement to chief of police quoted in Morison p 388. RGVIA 52.2.64.12, Ségur to GAP ud, summer of 1789, St Petersburg, unpublished.

44 Stedingk p 226, Stedingk to Gustavus III 6/17 February 1792. AKV 8: 48–50, Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov 13/24 February 1792, St Petersburg.

45 Masson p 195. As Catherine continued most of Potemkin’s policies, Zubov had the job of executing them, but he did so with none of the master’s lightness of touch and flexibility. His sole achievements were the greedy and bloody partition of Poland that Potemkin had hoped to avoid and the bungled negotiations to marry Grand Duchess Alexandra to the King of Sweden, a marriage the Prince had suggested. This was the humiliation that accelerated Catherine’s final stroke. Zubov’s very Potemkinian expedition to attack Persia was recalled after the Empress’s death.

46 Masson pp 58–9. AKV 13 (1879): 256, Bezborodko to S. R. Vorontsov 15 May 1792, Tsarskoe Selo.

47 Masson p 124. Ligne, Mélanges vol 24 p 183. The Prince de Ligne said they were planning to remove Paul as early as 1788. Ligne to Kaunitz 15 December 1788, Jassy.

48 McGrew p 237. ZOOID 9 (1875): 226, rescript of Paul I 11 April 1799. On the library: Bolotina, ‘Private Library of Prince GAPT’ 252–64, 29 May 1789. Paul orders library sent to Kazan Gymnasium, 29 March 1799. It arrived in Kazan in ‘18 carts’ and in 1806 was placed in the Library of Kazan State University.

49 Czartoryski p 62.

50 RP 1.1 p 72. AAE 20: 134–5, Langeron, ‘Evénements 1790’. Sophie de Witte/Potocka built a palace and a beautiful park called Sopheiwka which remains popular in today’s Ukraine. She also owned estates in the Crimea and planned to build a new town there, named after herself. One of her sons by Witte, Jan, became the Russian secret policeman in charge of observing the potential Polish revolutionaries against Alexander I in Odessa during the 1820s. The Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz was one of them. See Ascherson p 150.