Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Grigory Potemkin was among the eleven junior players who received 600 souls or 18,000 roubles.¹¹ He appeared on other lists in Catherine’s own handwriting: in one, the Horse-Guards commanders presented their report, suggesting that Potemkin be promoted to cornet. Catherine in her own hand wrote, ‘has to be lieutenant’, so he was promoted to second lieutenant,¹² and she promised him another 10,000 roubles. Catherine left Chancellor Vorontsov in his job, but Nikita Panin became her chief minister. Panin’s coterie wanted a regency for Paul, steered by aristocratic oligarchy, but the Orlovs and their Guards protected Catherine’s absolute power, which was their sole reason for being in government at all.¹³ However, the Orlovs had a further plan: the marriage of Grigory Orlov to the Empress. There was a not insurmountable obstacle to this: Catherine was already married.

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Peter III, Narcissus and Mopsy remained at Ropsha, guarded by Alexei Orlov and his 300 men, Potemkin among them. Orlov kept Catherine abreast of this awkward situation in a series of hearty, informal yet macabre letters. He mentioned Potemkin by name in these notes, another sign that Catherine was acquainted with him, albeit vaguely. But he concentrated on mocking Peter as the ‘freak’. One senses a tightening garotte in Orlov’s sinister jokes, as if he was seeking Catherine’s approval for his deed before he undertook it.¹⁴

She cannot have been surprised to learn around 5 July that Peter had been murdered. The details remain as murky as the deed. All we know is that Alexei Orlov and his myrmidons played their roles and that the ex-Emperor was throttled.¹⁵

The death served everyone’s ends. Ex-emperors were always living liabilities for their successors in a country plagued by pretenders. Even dead, they could rise again. Peter III’s mere existence undermined Catherine’s usurpation. He also threatened the Orlovs’ plans. There was no mistake in his murder. Was Potemkin involved? Since he was to be accused of every imaginable sin in his subsequent career, it is significant that the murder of Peter is never mentioned in connection with him, and this can only mean that he played no part in it. But he was at Ropsha.

Catherine shed bitter tears – for her reputation, not for Peter: ‘My glory is spoilt, Posterity will never forgive me.’ Dashkova was shocked but was also thinking about herself. ‘It is a death too sudden, Madame, for your glory and mine.’¹⁶ Catherine appreciated the benefits of the deed. No one was punished. Indeed Alexei Orlov was to play a prominent role for the next thirty years. But it made Catherine notorious in Europe as an adulterous regicide and matricide.

The Emperor’s body lay in state in a plain coffin at the Alexander Nevsky convent for two days in a blue Holstein uniform without any decorations. A cravat covered its bruised throat and a hat was placed low over its face to hide the blackening caused by strangulation.¹⁷

Catherine recovered her composure and issued a much mocked statement blaming Peter’s death on ‘a haemorrhoidal colic’.¹⁸ This absurd if necessary diagnosis was to become a euphemism in Europe for political murder. When Catherine later invited the philosophe d’Alembert to visit her, he joked to Voltaire that he did not dare since he was prone to piles, obviously a very dangerous condition in Russia.¹⁹

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The tsars of Russia were traditionally crowned in Moscow, the old Orthodox capital. Peter III, with his contempt for his adopted land, had not bothered to be crowned at all. Catherine, the usurper, was not about to make the same mistake. On the contrary, a usurper must follow the rituals of legitimacy down to the smallest detail, whatever the cost. Catherine ordered a lavish, traditional coronation to be arranged as soon as possible.

On 4 August, the very day he was promoted to second lieutenant on the personal order of the Empress, Potemkin was among three squadrons of Horse-Guards who departed for Moscow to attend the coronation. His mother and family still lived there to welcome the homecoming of the prodigal, for he had left as a scapegrace and now returned to guard an empress at her coronation. On the 27th, Grand Duke Paul, aged eight, the sole legitimate pillar of the new regime, accompanied by his Governor Panin with twenty-seven carriages and 257 horses, left the capital, followed by Grigory Orlov. The Empress left five days later with an entourage of twenty-three courtiers, sixty-three carriages and 395 horses. The Empress and the Tsarevich entered Moscow, city of cupolas and towers and old Russia, on Friday, 13 September. She always hated Moscow, where she felt disliked and where she had once fallen gravely ill. Now her prejudice was proved right when little Paul contracted fever, which just held off for the actual ceremony.