Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The Catherine who replied was the ruthless usurper usually hidden from view. After Pugachev she was in no mood to take risks with pretenders, however feminine and young: the swaggering almost gangsterish tone of the letter gives us a glimpse of how she might have behaved behind closed doors with the Orlovs. If those Ragusans do not hand over the miscreant, ‘one can toss a few bombs into the town’, she told Orlov-Chesmensky when the woman visited Ragusa. But it would be much better to capture her ‘without noise if possible’.³⁰

Scarface devised a devious plan to play on this adventuress’s delusions of grandeur and on her romantic dreams. He had two advisers as subtle as he was brutal: José Ribas, said to be a Spanish–Neapolitan cook’s son, joined the Russian Fleet in Italy. This talented mountebank, who later became a successful Russian general and one of Potemkin’s closest cronies, worked with a deft adjutant named Ivan Krestinek, who ingratiated himself into the ersatz Princess’s suite and enticed her to meet Orlov-Chesmensky in Pisa.

Scarface courted her, wrote her love letters, let her use his carriage and took her to the theatre. None of the Russians was allowed to sit down in her presence, as if she really was a member of the imperial family. But he also claimed to be furious that Potemkin had replaced his brother Prince Orlov and offered to use his fleet to help her mount the throne in order to return his family to their rightful place beside a new empress. His deception may have been a most pleasurable game: it seems she did become his mistress and that the affair lasted eight days. Maybe the girl believed that he was in love with her and she was successfully gulling him. In such heartless matters of state, Scarface was a master. His marriage proposal baited the trap.

He invited her to inspect his fleet at Livorno. She accepted. The squadron was commanded by a plainspoken Scottish vice-admiral, Samuel Greig, one of the architects of Chesme. Greig agreed to welcome the Princess, two Polish noblemen, two valets and four servants, all Italians, aboard with imperial honours. There she found a priest awaiting them, surrounded by the crew in ceremonial uniforms. Imperial salvoes were fired; sailors hailed her, ‘Long Live the Empress!’ The priest chanted a blessing over ‘Princess Elisabeth’ and Orlov-Chesmensky. It is said she wept with joy as all her dreams came true.

When she looked around, the Count was no longer beside her. His myrmidons seized ‘the villain’, as Orlov-Chesmensky reported to his Empress in Moscow, and took her below. As the ship headed for Petersburg, we know that Potemkin was in correspondence with Orlov-Chesmensky – some of the letters have survived and they would certainly have discussed this affair. Catherine shared Scarface’s letters with him. ‘My honey, my sweetheart,’ she wrote at the time of the kidnapping, ‘send me the letter[s] from…Co[unt] Al[exei] Gr[igorevich] Orlov.’ In April, the couple discussed the reward due to Krestinek for his effective if distasteful work in reeling in the adventuress. Many felt that Greig’s role in this dubious kidnapping on foreign soil was unbecoming in a British officer, but no evidence has reached us that the admiral, who was set on making a career in Russian service, had any compunction about kidnapping a young woman, especially as he was personally thanked in Moscow by Catherine herself.

The ‘Princess’ arrived in Petersburg on 12 May and was immediately delivered under cover of darkness to the Peter and Paul Fortress, though legend says she was kept for a while in one of Potemkin’s suburban residences. Field-Marshal Golitsyn, Governor of Petersburg, interrogated her to learn who backed her and if she really believed her story. It seems that, like many of those who are able to convince followers of deceptions, she believed her own stories: Golitsyn reported to Catherine that ‘the story of her life is filled with fantastic affairs and rather resembles fairy-tales’. Catherine and Potemkin would have followed this interrogation with interest. In the fevered imaginations of Russian peasants, crazier stories had created armies. But when the ‘Princess’ wrote to Catherine asking for an interview, and signed herself ‘Elisabeth’, the Empress turned on her: ‘Send someone to tell the notorious woman that if she wishes to lighten her petty fate, then she should cease playing comedy.’³¹