Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Catherine was already under pressure about Potemkin. In early March, unidentified but powerful courtiers, including one nicknamed ‘the Alchemist’ – possibly Panin or an Orlov – advised Catherine to dispense with Potemkin: ‘The man you call “the Alchemist” visited…He tried to demonstrate to me the frenzy of yours and my actions and finished by asking if he wanted me to ask you to go back to the Army: to which I agreed. They are all of them at least trying to lecture me…I didn’t own up but I didn’t excuse myself too so they couldn’t claim that I’d lied.’ But the letters also show Potemkin and Catherine’s unity in political matters:

In short, I have masses of things to tell you and particularly on the subject we spoke about yesterday between noon and two o’clock; but I do not know if you are in the same mood as yesterday and I don’t know either whether your words correspond always to your actions since you promised me several times you would come and you do not come…I am thinking about you all the time. Oh! La! La! What a long letter I have written to you. Excuse me, I always forget that you don’t like it. I’ll never do it again. ⁴

Catherine struggled to prevent Potemkin’s rise from causing a rift with the Orlovs: ‘I ask you – don’t do one thing: don’t injure and don’t try to injure Prince Orlov in my thoughts because that would be ingratitude on your part. Before your arrival there was no one who was praised and loved by him as you.’⁵

Potemkin now demanded a place in government. The most important positions were war and foreign affairs. Since he had come back as a war hero from the Danube, it was natural for him to choose the War College as his target. As early as 5 March 1774, within a week of his appointment as her adjutant-general, she channelled orders to Zakhar Chernyshev, President of the College of War, Orlov’s ally, through Potemkin.⁶ As ever, the Pugachev Rebellion worked to Potemkin’s advantage: all governments require scapegoats for public disasters. Thus Zakhar Chernyshev, who received none of the credit for Rumiantsev’s victories, bore the blame for the rampages of Pugachev, and was none too happy about it: ‘Count Chernyshev is very anxious and keeps saying he will retire.’⁷ Ten days after Potemkin had delivered Catherine’s messages to Chernyshev, she promoted him to lieutenant-colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards, of which she was colonel. This had been Alexei Orlov’s place, so it was a sign of the highest favour – and of the eclipse of the Orlovs. And he became captain of the sixty gorgeously attired Chevaliers-Gardes who patrolled the palaces in silver helmets and breastplates and whose Hussar or Cossack squadrons escorted her carriage.

Potemkin knew that it would be madness to take on all the factions at Court, so he tried ‘to be friends with everyone’, wrote Countess Rumiantseva⁸ – especially Nikita Panin.⁹ The smug and slothful Panin looked ‘more content than before’ Potemkin’s advent. But Count Solms did not underestimate him: ‘I’m only afraid that Potemkin, who has a reputation for being sly and wicked, can benefit by Panin’s kindness.’¹⁰

The favourite hoped, through Panin, to neutralize the other dangerous element in Catherine’s Court – the pug-nosed, punctilious, Prussophile Heir Grand Duke Paul, now twenty, who longed to play a political role befitting his rank. Paul had disliked Prince Orlov, but he was to hate the new favourite even more, because he already sensed that Potemkin would forever exclude him from Court. Potemkin soon crossed him. Paul, a stickler for military discipline à la Prusse, bumped into the favourite when he visited his mother and grumbled about Potemkin’s dress. ‘My darling,’ Catherine told her lover, ‘the Grand Duke comes to me on Tuesdays and Fridays…9 to 11 o’clock…No criticism because Count…Andrei Razumovsky [friend of Grand Duke Paul] goes to see them in the same dress, I don’t find him any worse dressed than you…’.¹¹ Fortunately, Grand Duke Paul had not encountered Potemkin in one of his half-open bearskins with the pink bandanna, which was enough to alarm anyone.

Panin undertook to stroke the increasingly bitter Tsarevich towards ‘clever’ Potemkin’s side.¹² So Potemkin was using Panin, who thought he was using Potemkin. Countess Rumiantseva told her husband that Potemkin’s return had changed everything politically – and she was right.¹³

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