Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The murder of two emperors shocked Europe: the philosophes, who were already enjoying a flattering correspondence with the Empress and regarded her as one of their own, had to bend over backwards to overcome their scruples: ‘I agree with you that our philosophy does not want to boast of too many pupils like her. But what can one do? One must love one’s friends with all their faults,’ wrote d’Alembert to Voltaire. The latter wittily coined a new euphemism for murdering two tsars: ‘These are family matters,’ said the sage of Ferney, ‘which do not concern me.’³⁸

—

Being Catherine, she did not relax. She knew that it was not enough merely to rule. Her Court was the mirror which would reflect her successes to the world. She knew that she herself had to be its finest ornament.

‘I never saw in my life a person whose port, manner and behaviour answered so strongly to the idea I had formed of her,’ wrote the English envoy Sir George Macartney. ‘Though in her 37^th year of her age, she may still be called beautiful. Those who knew her younger say they never remembered her so lovely as at present and I very readily believe it.’³⁹ The Prince de Ligne, looking back from 1780, thought, ‘She had been more handsome than pretty. The majesty of her forehead was tempered by the eyes and agreeable smile.’⁴⁰ The perspicacious Scottish professor William Richardson, author of Anecdotes of the Russian Empire, wrote, ‘The Russian Empress is above average height, gracious and well proportioned but well covered, has pretty colouring but seeks to embellish it with rouge, like all women in this country. Her mouth is well-shaped with fine teeth; her blue eyes have a scrutinizing expression. The whole is such that it would be insulting to say she had a masculine look but it would not be doing her justice to say she was entirely feminine.’ The celebrated lover Giacomo Casanova, who met Catherine and knew something about women, captured the workings of her charm: ‘Of medium stature, but well built and with a majestic bearing, the Sovereign had the art of making herself loved by all those whom she believed were curious to know her. Though not beautiful, she was sure to please by her sweetness, affability and her intelligence, of which she made very good use to appear to have no pretensions.’⁴¹

In conversation, she was ‘not witty herself’⁴² but she made up for it by being quick and well informed. Macartney thought ‘her conversation is brilliant, perhaps too brilliant for she loves to shine in conversation’. Casanova revealed her need to appear effortlessly clever: when he encountered her out walking, he talked about the Greek calendar and she said little, but when they met again, she was fully informed on the subject. ‘I felt certain that she had studied the subject on purpose to dazzle.’⁴³

She possessed the gift of tact: when she was discussing her reforms with some deputies from Novgorod, the Governor explained that ‘these gentlemen are not rich’. Catherine shot back: ‘I demand your pardon, Mr Governor. They are rich in zeal.’ This charming response brought tears to their eyes and pleased them more than money.⁴⁴

When she was at work, she dressed sensibly in a long Russian-style dress with hanging sleeves, but when at play or display, ‘her dress is never gaudy, always rich…she appears to great advantage in regimentals and is fond of appearing in them’.⁴⁵ When she entered a room, she always made ‘three bows à la Russe…’ to the right, left and middle.⁴⁶ She understood that appearances mattered, so she followed Orthodox rituals to the letter in public, despite Casanova noticing that she barely paid attention in church.

She was indeed a woman who took infinite pains to be a great empress and she had a Germanic attitude to wasting time: ‘waste as little time as possible’, she said. ‘Time belongs, not to me, but to the Empire.’⁴⁷ One part of her genius was choosing talented men and getting the best out of them: ‘Catherine had the rare ability to choose the right people,’ wrote Count Alexander Ribeaupierre, who knew her and her top officials. ‘History has justified her choices.’⁴⁸ Once they had been selected, she managed her men so adroitly that each of them ‘began to think [what she proposed] was his own idea and tried to fulfil it with zeal’.⁴⁹ She was careful not to humiliate her servants: ‘My policy is to praise aloud and scold in a low voice.’⁵⁰ Indeed many of her sayings are so simple and shrewd that they could be collected as a modern management guide.