Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Then, two months later, when Grigory Orlov opened talks with the Turks in Fokshany in faraway Moldavia, Potemkin, according to Samoilov,⁴⁶ was at the talks, behaving in the manner for which he would later become famous. As Orlov negotiated, Potemkin supposedly spent the hours lazing on a sofa in his dressing gown, plunged in thought. This sounds just like him. It was natural that he and his troops would be in the area along with the rest of the army. Rumiantsev was there of course. Potemkin was presumably in his entourage, but he must have had Catherine’s blessing to lounge in the midst of an international peace conference, chaired by the suspicious Orlov. Did Catherine send Potemkin to watch Orlov? Why else would Orlov have tolerated him?

The real story is why Orlov himself was there at all: he had neither diplomatic experience nor the temperament for the job. It emerged that Catherine had her own private reasons to remove him from St Petersburg, yet would she really have risked the peace conference merely to get him out of the capital? Admittedly he was assisted by the experienced Obreskov, the Russian Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, recently freed from the Seven Towers. But Orlov was scarcely suited to the tortuous horse-trading that the Turks regarded as good manners.

Then he argued with Rumiantsev. Orlov wanted to start the war again; Rumiantsev, who knew that recruits were few, disease rampant and money short, did not. The Field-Marshal’s fastidious intelligence gave him the acuteness of an ice-pick. This must have riled the easygoing giant, who was far out of his depth. Finally, he lost his temper in mid-session and, to the astonishment of the Turkish plenipotentiaries, threatened to hang Rumiantsev himself. The Turks, who still regarded themselves as the receptacles of all that was elegant and civilized, no doubt shook their heads at these manifestations of Slavic barbarism. But the issues at risk there were extremely complicated and becoming more so by the day. Catherine was determined that the Turks should agree to the independence of the Crimea from Turkish sovereignty. The Crimea, suspended from the continent like a diamond from a belly dancer’s navel, dominated the Black Sea. The Turks claimed it as their ‘pure and immaculate virgin’ – the Sultan’s lake. Catherine’s proposal would remove Turkey from direct control of the northern coast of the Black Sea, except for its fortresses, and bring Russia one step closer to Peter the Great’s foiled dream of controlling its power and commerce.

Meanwhile Prussia and Austria were becoming restless at the Russian successes: acquisitive, ruthless Frederick the Great was jealous that his Russian ally might gain too much Ottoman territory. Austria, hostile to Prussia and Russia, secretly negotiated a defensive treaty with the Turks. Prussia wanted some compensation for being a loyal ally to Russia; Austria wanted a reward for being a thoroughly disloyal one to Turkey. Whatever they said, Russia and Prussia both looked longingly at the helpless chaos of Poland. Austria’s Empress – Queen, Maria Theresa, balked at this thievery – yet, as Frederick the Great put it, ‘she wept, but she took’. Picturesque, feeble and self-destructive Poland was like an unlocked bank from which these imperial brigands could steal what they wished to pay for their expensive wars, satisfy their greed and ease their jealousy of each other. Austria, Prussia and Russia negotiated the First Partition of Poland, leaving Catherine free to enforce her demands on Turkey.

Just when the Polish partition was all but agreed, Sweden, Turkey’s traditional ally, stepped in to spoil the party. Over the years, Russia had spent millions of roubles on bribes to ensure that Sweden remain a limited monarchy, split between the French and Russian parties. But in August 1772 its new young King, Gustavus III, restored absolutism in a coup. He encouraged the Turks to fight on. So, back in Fokshany, Orlov became tired of the Turks’ intransigence over his demand for Crimean independence. Whether it was the complexity of the diplomacy, the minutiae of Turkish etiquette or the presence of Potemkin, yawning in his dressing gown on the sofa, Orlov now delivered an ultimatum to the Turks that ruined the conference. The Turks walked out.

Orlov had other things on his mind: the Court was in crisis. Suddenly on 23 August, without awaiting orders, he abandoned the conference and headed for Petersburg as fast as his horses would carry him. Potemkin, if he still lay on the sofa as Orlov galloped away, would have been even deeper in thought than usual.

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Grigory Orlov was stopped at the gates of St Petersburg at the express order of the Empress. He was ordered, for reasons of quarantine, to proceed to his nearby estate of Gatchina.