Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Potemkin’s critics, such as Simon Vorontsov and Yuri Dolgoruky, mostly writing after his death when it was fashionable to denounce him, claimed he was an incompetent and a coward.⁵⁸ Yet, as we have seen, Field-Marshals Golitsyn and Rumiantsev acclaimed his exploits well before he rose to power, and other officers wrote to their friends about his daring, right up until Silistria. Rumiantsev’s report described Potemkin as ‘one of those military commanders who extolled the glory…of Russian arms by courage and skill’. What is the truth?

Rumiantsev’s complimentary report to Catherine was written after Potemkin’s rise in 1775 and was therefore bound to exaggerate his achievements – but Rumiantsev was not the sort of man to lie. So Potemkin performed heroically in the Turkish War and made his name.

As soon as the army was in winter quarters, he dashed for St Petersburg. His impatience was noticed, suspected and analysed by the many observers of Court intrigues, who asked one another – ‘Why so hastily?’⁵⁹

Skip Notes

*1 Rumiantsev’s mother was born in 1699 and lived to be eighty-nine. The grandest lady-in-waiting at Court had known the Duke of Marlborough and Louis XIV, remembered Versailles and the day St Petersburg was founded. She liked to boast until her dying day that she was Peter the Great’s last mistress. The dates certainly fitted: the boy was named Peter after the Tsar. His official father, yet another Russian giant, was a provincial boy who became a Count, a General-en-Chef and one of Peter the Great’s hard men: he was the ruffian sent to pursue Peter’s fugitive son, the Tsarevich Alexei, to Austria and bring him back to be tortured to death by his father.

*2 Catherine, in one of the undated love letters usually placed at the official start of their affair in 1774, tells Potemkin that a nameless courtier, perhaps an Orlov ally, has warned her about her behaviour with him and asked permission to send him back to the army, to which she agrees.

*3 Peter the Great did make his favourite Prince Menshikov, but that was an exception. After 1796, Emperor Paul and his successors began to create princes themselves so promiscuously that they ultimately caused an inflationary glut in the prestige of that title.

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  THE HAPPIEST MAN ALIVE

Thy lovely eyes captivated me yet I trembled to say I loved.

G. A. Potemkin to Catherine II, February/March 1774

This clever fellow is as amusing as the very devil.

Catherine II on G. A. Potemkin

So much changed the moment Grigory Alexandrovich [Potemkin] arrived!

Countess Ekaterina Rumiantseva to Count Peter Rumiantsev, 20 March 1774

Lieutenant-General Grigory Potemkin arrived in St Petersburg some time in January 1774 and strode exuberantly into a Court in turmoil, no doubt expecting to be invited into Catherine’s bed and government. If so, he was to be disappointed.

The general moved into a cottage in the courtyard of his brother-in-law Nikolai Samoilov’s house¹ and then went to present himself to the Empress. Did she tell him of the disasters and intrigues that swirled around her? Did she beg him to be patient? Potemkin was so enervated with anticipation that he found patience difficult. Ever since he was a child, he had believed he was destined to command and, ever since he joined the Guards, he had been in love with the Empress. He appeared to be all impulse and passion, yet he had learned to wait a little. He appeared frequently at Court and made Catherine laugh. The courtiers knew that Potemkin was suddenly ascending. One day, he was going upstairs at the Winter Palace when he passed a descending Prince Orlov. ‘Any news?’, Potemkin asked Orlov. ‘No,’ Prince Orlov replied, ‘except that I am on the way down and you’re on the way up.’ But nothing happened – at least not in public. The days passed into weeks. The wait was excruciating for someone of Potemkin’s nature. Catherine was in a complicated and sensitive situation, personally and politically, so she moved slowly and cautiously. Vassilchikov remained her official lover – he still lived in his Palace apartments and he presumably shared her bed. However, Vassilchikov was a disappointing companion for Catherine, who found him corrosively dull. Boredom bred unhappiness, then contempt. ‘His caresses only made me cry,’ she told Potemkin afterwards.² Potemkin became more and more impatient: she had sent him encouraging letters and summoned him. He had come as fast as he could. He had waited for this moment for twelve devoted years. She knew how clever and capable he was: why not let him help her? She had admitted she had feelings for him as he had for her. Why not throw out Vassilchikov?