Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Catherine and Potemkin planned a secret rendezvous that must have filled them with a sense of mounting anticipation, jubilation and anxiety. On 4 June 1774, the Empress, still recovering in Tsarskoe Selo from her blistering confrontation with Prince Orlov, wrote this cryptic note to Potemkin, who was in the city: ‘My dear, I’ll come tomorrow and I’ll bring with me that which you wrote about. Order them to prepare Field-Marshal Golitsyn’s boat opposite the Sievers’ landing-stage, if it will be possible to pull in to the shore not far from the palace…’.¹ Alexander Golitsyn, Potemkin’s first commander in the war, was Governor-General of the capital, so he had his own boat. Count Yakov Sievers had a landing stage on the Fontanka, beside the Summer Palace.

On 5 June, as promised to Potemkin, the Empress returned to St Petersburg. Next day, a Friday, she held a small dinner for her senior courtiers in the little garden of the Summer Palace, perhaps to say goodbye to Prince Orlov, about to ‘travel abroad’. On Sunday, 8 June, Catherine and Potemkin attended a dinner in honour of the Izmailovsky Guards: the toasts were answered by salvoes of cannon; the meal on a silver service from Paris was accompanied by Italian singers. Afterwards, Catherine walked on the banks of the Fontanka beside Count Sievers’s house.²

At midnight on that summer’s evening, the Empress set off on a mysterious boating trip from the Summer Palace on the Fontanka. She often visited her courtiers in their houses on the Neva or on the islands that made up St Petersburg. But this was different. It was late for a woman who liked to be in bed by 11 p.m. She left secretly, her face probably hidden by a hooded cloak.³ It is said that she was alone – except for her loyal maid, Maria Savishna Perekushina. General-en-Chef Potemkin, who had been with her all day, was absent. He had slipped away at dusk to a boat waiting on the river, which had borne him into the mist and then out of sight.

Catherine’s boat struck out of the Fontanka, past the Summer Palace with its gardens, into the Great Neva river, heading for the unfashionable Viborg Side. The boat moored at the one of the little jetties on the Little Nevka. There the Empress climbed into an unmarked carriage, waiting with the curtains drawn. As soon as Empress and maid were inside, the postillions whipped the horses and the carriage headed briskly down the road. It stopped on the right outside the Church of St Sampsonovsky. There was no one around. The ladies disembarked and entered St Sampsonov. The church had been built by Peter the Great, unusually in the Ukrainian style, in wood (it was rebuilt in stone in 1781), to celebrate the saint’s day of the Battle of Poltava. Its most striking feature was a high bell tower, painted in lilac blue, white and green.⁴

The Empress found Potemkin inside the church, illuminated by candles. ‘The greatest nailbiter in the Empire’ would have chewed his fingers to the quick. Since they had attended the Izmailovsky Guards dinner earlier, both would still be in their ‘regimentals’ – Potemkin in his uniform of a general-en-chef – green coat with red collar, braided with gold lace, red breeches, high boots, sword, hat with gold border and white feathers. We know from the Court Journal that Catherine was wearing her ‘long Regimental Guards uniform’ all day: it was ‘trimmed in gold lace made in the form of a lady’s riding habit’.⁵ The Empress could now hand the hooded cloak to her maid, knowing that she looked most fetching in ‘regimentals’. Perhaps her dress reminded them of the day they met.

There were just three other men in the church. A nameless priest and the two ‘grooms’. Catherine’s ‘groom’ was Chamberlain Evgraf Alexandrovich Chertkov; Potemkin’s was his nephew, Alexander Nikolaievich Samoilov. It was the nephew who read the portion from the Gospel. When he reached the words ‘wife be afraid of her husband’, Samoilov hesitated and glanced at the Sovereign. Could an empress be afraid of her husband? Catherine nodded and he continued.⁶ The priest then commenced the marriage ceremony. Samoilov and Chertkov stepped forward to hold the crowns over their heads as in a traditional Orthodox wedding. When the long ceremony was finished, the wedding certificates were signed and distributed among the witnesses. All were sworn to secrecy. Potemkin had become the secret consort of Catherine II.

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This is the legend of Potemkin and Catherine’s wedding. There is no conclusive proof that they married, but it is almost certain they did. However, secret marriages have always been the stuff of royal myth. In Russia, Empress Elisabeth was said to have married Alexei Razumovsky. In England, the Prince of Wales was soon to marry Mrs Fitzherbert in a secret ceremony, the validity of which was much debated.