Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

While Catherine and Potemkin celebrated victory in Moscow, ‘Princess Elisabeth’, who already suffered from tuberculosis, was kept in a damp cell where she dwelt in her castles in the air. She pathetically appealed for better conditions in her letters to Catherine. But she did not exist any more. No one heard her. Just as Catherine had turned a blind eye to Peter’s murder and had arranged for Ivan’s jailers to kill him if necessary, now the consumptive girl was abandoned. There were two floods in St Petersburg in June and July of that summer and a greater one in 1777, so the legend grew that the shivering beauty had been gradually drowned as the waters rose in her subterranean cell. This was the image recreated in Flavitsky’s chilling portrait. It was also claimed that she died giving birth to Orlov-Chesmensky’s child and that he was tormented with guilt – an unlikely sentiment in his case.

She is known to history by one of the few imaginable titles she had not used herself: ‘Princess Tarakanova’, literally ‘of the cockroaches’. The name derived from her claims to be the child of Alexei Razumovsky, whose nephews were called Daraganov – which may have become ‘Tarakanov’. But ‘Princess of the Cockroaches’ could also have come from the image of the insects who were the sole companions of her last days.³² While the Empress was preparing to return to the capital, ‘Princess Elisabeth’ perished of consumption on 4 December 1775 . She was twenty-three. Her body was hastily and secretly buried – another inconvenience snuffed out.³³

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When the Grand Duke Paul and the Court returned from the Kolomenskoe Palace outside town on 6 July 1775, even dour Moscow must have been incandescent with excitement, teeming with soldiers, princes, ambassadors, priests and ordinary folk, all ready for ten days of partying. The celebrations, the first political spectacular arranged by Potemkin, were designed to reflect Russia’s victorious emergence from six years of war, pestilence and rebellion. Eighteenth-century festivities usually involved triumphal arches and fireworks. The arches, based on the Roman model, were sometimes made of stone but more usually of canvas, wood-bunting or papier-mâché. Notes flew between Empress and Potemkin over every detail: ‘Have you received the people working on the feu d’artifice for the peace?’, she asked him.³⁴

The intricacy and scale of the arrangements put everyone on edge. When Simon Vorontsov arrived with his troops, ‘I presented to…Potemkin the state in which my regiment was and he gave me his word he would not make us do exercises or public inspections for three months…But ten days later, against his word, he sent me to say that the Empress with all her Court would come to see the exercises…I understand that he wanted me to lose face in public…’. The next day, they argued violently.³⁵

On 8 July, the hero of the war, Field-Marshal Rumiantsev, approached the city. Potemkin sent a fond, respectful note to ‘batushka’ Rumiantsev arranging to meet him at Chertanova, ‘where the marquee [of the triumphal arch] is ready’, signing off, ‘Your most humble and faithful servant, G. Potemkin.’ Potemkin then rode out and brought the Field-Marshal to Catherine’s apartments.

On the 10th, the imperial entourage walked from the Prechinsky Gate to the Kremlin. Potemkin had stage-managed a splendid show to convince foreign observers of the ascendancy of this victorious Empress. ‘Every street in the Kremlin was filled with soldiers…a great dais…draped in red cloths, and all the walls of the cathedrals and other buildings, were lined with rows of tiered seats to create a vast amphitheatre…But nothing can compare with the magnificent sight which greeted us with the procession of the Empress…’. As the earth literally shook with the ‘sound and thunder’ of ringing bells, the Empress, wearing a small crown and purple cloak lined with ermine, progressed back to the Cathedral with Rumiantsev on her left and Potemkin on her right. Over her head, twelve generals bore a purple canopy. Her train was carried by Chevaliers-Gardes, in red and gold uniforms with glittering silver helmets and ostrich plumes. Her entire Court followed ‘in gorgeous dress’. At the door of the Uspensky, the Empress was greeted by her bishops. Solemn mass was performed, the ‘Te Deum’ sung. ‘We were entranced,’ recalled a spectator.³⁶