Catherine the Great & Potemkin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘Be careful!’, warned Ségur again.

  ‘Your friendship touches me,’ said the Prince. ‘But I disdain my enemies too much to fear them.’53

  On 17 June, the Empress, Grand Duke, Potemkin, Yermolov and Ségur left Tsarskoe Selo for Pella. The next day, she visited Potemkin’s neighbouring palace at Ostrovky, more evidence that Potemkin’s true position was not nearly as disastrous as gossip suggested. On their return to Tsarskoe Selo, Potemkin attended all Catherine’s dinners for the next three days. Presumably, the conspirators were now pushing Catherine to act on their evidence. Even in the sunny Catherine Palace, Potemkin was being cold-shouldered.

  The next day, he simply left Court without a word and travelled towards Narva on the Baltic. He established himself back in the capital at the palace of the Master of Horse, Naryshkin, occupying himself with ‘parties, pleasure and love’. Potemkin’s ‘enemies sang victory’. Catherine presumably was used to his sulks and did nothing. But when he did not appear on 28 June – Catherine’s Accession Day – she surely realized that the masterful politician was calling her bluff.

  ‘I am very anxious if you are well?’, Catherine wrote secretly to Potemkin, answering his challenge. ‘I haven’t heard a word from you for so many days.’54 The letter was warm. It was one of those signs that he understood perfectly. Potemkin waited a few days.

  Then he suddenly appeared at Court – a Banquo’s ghost who turned out not to be a ghost at all. The Prince supposedly stormed directly into the Empress’s boudoir in ‘a fury’55 and shouted something like this: ‘I come, Madame, to declare to Your Majesty that Your Majesty must this instant choose between Yermolov and me – one of us must this very day quit your Court. As long as you keep that White Negro, I will not set my foot within the Palace.’56 Then he stormed out again and left Tsarskoe Selo.

  On 15 July, the Empress dismissed Yermolov through one of his puppet-masters, Zavadovsky. The White Negro departed the next day, burdened with 4,000 peasants, 130,000 roubles and an order to travel.*6 That very evening, the other young officer with whom Catherine had flirted with a year earlier, Alexander Dmitriyev-Mamonov, arrived with Potemkin. Mamonov was his adjutant (and distant kinsman). Potemkin is said to have sent Mamonov to Catherine bearing a watercolour, with the saucy question, what did she think of the picture? She viewed his looks and replied: ‘The contours are fine but the choice of colours less fortunate.’ This is a legend, but it does sound like one of the games that Potemkin alone could play with the Empress. The next day, the Empress wrote to Mamonov…

  That night, Mamonov passed his friend Khrapovitsky, the Empress’s secretary, as he was escorted into Catherine’s bedchamber – either an awkward or a triumphant moment to meet a close friend. It was indeed a very small world which the diarist Khrapovitsky recorded in fascinating detail. Next morning, the punctilious secretary noted archly: ‘They s[lep]t until nine o’clock’ – in other words, the Empress spent an extra three hours in bed. Next day, ‘they closed the door. M–v was there at dinner and according to custom – [she was] powdered’, according to Khrapovitsky, whose eyes almost never leave the imperial keyhole.57

  The handover to Mamonov was so seamless that it is quite possible that Potemkin’s ‘fury’ had been much earlier and that the crisis was never about embezzlement at all but about Yermolov himself. It is likely that Catherine was romancing Mamonov while Yermolov and his plotters were singing with victory. This explains Potemkin’s unusual absence of nerves about the conspiracy – another example of his play-acting. Potemkin threatened, at one time or another, to have every one of the favourites dismissed, from Zavadovsky onwards. Usually Catherine reassured him that his power was secure – so he should mind his own business. She forced the favourites to flatter him, while he was flexible enough to befriend them and work with them. He succeeded in deposing Yermolov probably because that minion refused to live within Potemkin’s system – and because Catherine did not really love him. However arranged, it was a political victory.

  ‘Matuskha having walked around Petersburg, Peterhof, Oranienbaum, I’ve returned and I kiss your feet. I’ve brought Paracletes safe, healthy, merry and lovable.’ Paracletes – matushka’s little helper, Mamonov – was already with the Empress, who replied, ‘It’s a great joy, batinka: how are you feeling without any sleep, my lord? How glad I am you’ve arrived!’58

  ‘Prince Grigory Alexandrovich has returned,’ wrote Khrapovitsky on 20 July. Mamonov gratefully presented the Prince with a golden teapot engraved ‘More united by heart than by blood’, because they were such distant relations.59 Mamonov, aged twenty-six, was an educated Francophile from the middling gentry, with an exquisite rosebud mouth and tidy little nose. He was much more cultured and intelligent than Yermolov and widely liked for his charm, looks and courtesy. Catherine showered him with honours: the Adjutant-General was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire and he soon owned 27,000 serfs while receiving 180,000 roubles a year with a table budget of 36,000 roubles. Did she feel she had to compensate her lovers more for her own ageing? Catherine fell in love with him and was soon raving about him. She nicknamed him ‘Mister Redcoat’, because he liked to wear one that went well with his black eyes. ‘The red coat’, she exulted to Grimm on 17 December, ‘covers a man with an excellent heart…the wit of four people…an inexhaustible well of merriment.’ Mamonov made Catherine happy and Potemkin secure. He became a member of their unusual family, like Lanskoy, helping the nieces Branicka and Skavronskaya,60 and writing warm letters to the Prince, which Catherine enclosed with her own. Sometimes she added postscripts to Mamonov’s letters, which he usually signed ‘with absolute devotion’.61

  Soon after the fall of the White Negro and the installation of Mister Redcoat, Potemkin invited Ségur for dinner. ‘Well Monsieur Diplomat,’ the Prince greeted him, ‘at least in this case…my predictions are better than yours!’ Then, embracing his friend warmly, Potemkin boomed: ‘Was I mistaken in anything, batushka? Did the child overthrow me? Did my bravery sink me?’62

  His bravery had indeed paid off handsomely. Serenissimus could return to the south. He was away so much that Colonel Mikhail Garnovsky, his homme d’affaires in Petersburg who made a fortune out of the Duchess of Kingston, sent him secret reports on the politics of the Court. Garnovsky particularly monitored the behaviour of the favourite and noticed that, when toasts were drunk, he carefully drank only to the Prince. Catherine showed state papers to Mamonov, but he was no statesman. Potemkin’s enemies Alexander Vorontsov and Zavadovsky courted him, hoping he would do a Yermolov. He remained loyal but he suffered. He was jealous if Catherine paid attention to anyone else, but found Court life lonely and cruel: he was right when he said the courtiers were like ‘wolves in a forest’.63

  Catherine and Potemkin decided the time had come for her to inspect his achievements in the south and demonstrate Russia’s undying commitment to controlling the Black Sea. The date kept changing, but finally they agreed that she would visit Kherson and Crimea in the summer of 1787. On the eve of Catherine’s departure on this remarkable and glorious expedition, Serenissimus was now at the height of his power, exercising, ‘in Russia, a power greater than…Wolsey, Olivares and Richelieu’,64 wrote one foreigner. For years, diplomats described him as ‘Grand Vizier’,65 others called him ‘Prime Minister’,66 but none of these quite caught his unique position. Saint-Jean was closest to the reality: ‘People realized they could not overthrow Potemkin…He was tsar in all but name.’67 But was he happy? How did he live? Who was Potemkin the man?

  Skip Notes

  *1 Dr Rogerson had just claimed another victim. Soon after seeing off Samuel Bentham’s love for his niece, Field-Marshal Prince Alexander Golitsyn died in Rogerson’s care, probably bled and purged to death. ‘I’m afraid’, Catherine half joked to Potemkin, ‘that anybody who gets into Rogerson’s hands is already dead.’

  *2 Onhis death, the Palace passed to the Romanovs: it was the
Petersburg residence of Alexander I’s adored sister Catherine until her death in 1818. Then it belonged to Nicholas I until his accession and was then used to hold the Empress’s dances: Pushkin and his wife often danced there. Later, it belonged to Tsar Nicholas II’s mother, the Empress Maria Fyodorovna, until 1917. In February 1914, Prince Felix Yusopov, the future killer of Rasputin, married Grand Duchess Irina there.

  *3 A hideous Soviet cinema stands there today.

  *4 There was a sinister tradition that ‘Princess Tarakanova’ was kept here for a while, with the child supposedly fathered by Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky, but there is no evidence for this stay or the child. Ostrovky survived until the Nazis destroyed it, but luckily it was photographed during the 1930s.

  *5 The author found its ruins in the Bablovsky Park. There is a surprise inside the tower: a circular red granite bowl with a diameter of about ten feet. This was the early version of a swimming pool built by Alexander I, where he used to swim privately during hot Tsarskoe Selo summers.

  *6 Yermolov’s demand for an audience with George III when he visited London caused some awkwardness a year later. He later settled in Vienna.

  22

  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GRIGORY ALEXANDROVICH

  Tis you, the bravest of all mortals!

  Mind fertile with a host of schemes!

  You did not tread the usual paths

  But did extend them – and the roar

  You left behind to your descendants.

  Tis you, Potemkin, wondrous leader!

  Gavrili Derzhavin, The Waterfall

  Morning

  The Prince woke late when he resided at the ‘Shepilev house’, linked by its covered passageway to the Empress’s apartments in the Winter Palace. The anterooms were already crowded with dignitaries. He received favoured ones lying in bed in his dressing gown. When he arose, he liked to have a cool bath followed by a short morning prayer. His breakfast was usually hot chocolate and a glass of liqueur.

  If he decided to hold a large audience, he reclined in his reception room, studiously ignoring the keenest sycophants. But they were in trouble if they ignored him. One young secretary, educated at both Cambridge and Oxford, was waiting to see the Prince with a briefcase of papers among all the generals and ambassadors. They sat in sepulchral silence because everyone knew the Prince was still asleep. ‘Suddenly the door of the bedroom…was loudly opened and the huge Potemkin appeared on his own in a dressing gown, calling for his valet. Before he even had time to call, in a sudden moment, everyone in the hall – generals and noblemen – competing in their speed, rushed headlong out of the room to find the Prince’s valet…’. Since everyone else had scampered off, the secretary remained frozen there in Potemkin’s presence, ‘not even daring to blink’.

  Serenissimus gave him a menacing glance and strode off. When he reappeared in full uniform. Potemkin called him over: ‘Tell me, Alekseev, do you know how many nut-trees there are in my Taurida Palace garden?’ Alekseev did not know. ‘Go to my garden, count them and report to me,’ ordered the Prince. By nightfall, the youngster returned and gave the Prince the number. ‘Good. You fulfilled my order quickly and well. Do you know why you were given such an order? To teach you to be more prompt because I noted this morning, when I cried for my valet and generals and noblemen rushed to find him, you didn’t move, you greenhorn…Come tomorrow with your papers because today I am not disposed to examine them. Goodbye!’1

  * * *

  —

  The petitioners were puzzled by the looks and character of this Prince – he was unpredictable, fascinating, alarming. He exuded both menace and welcome: he could be ‘frightening’,2 crushingly arrogant, wittily mischievous, warm and kind, manic and morose. When Alexander Ribeaupierre was eight, he was taken to see Potemkin and never forgot his animalistic power and affectionate gentleness: ‘I was terrified when he lifted me up in his mighty hands. He was immensely tall. I can see him now in my mind’s eye wearing his loose dressing gown with his hairy chest naked.’3 Ligne said he was ‘tall, erect, proud, handsome, noble, majestic or fascinating’, while others described him as a hideous Cyclops. Yet Catherine constantly talked of his handsomeness and he was amply endowed with ‘sex appeal’, to judge by the female letters that fill his archive.4 He was undeniably vain about his fame, but shy about his appearance, particularly his one eye. When someone sent him a courier with one eye, Serenissimus immediately suspected that they were trying to make fun of him and was deeply hurt by this ‘ill-judged wit’ – this when he was the most powerful man east of Vienna.5 That is the reason there are so few portraits of him.

  ‘Prince Potemkin has never consented to be painted,’ Catherine explained to Grimm, ‘and if there exists any portrait or silhouette of him, it is against his wish.’6 She persuaded him around 1784 and again in 1791 to sit for Giambattista Lampi, the only artist he trusted.7 But Serenissimus, ever shy of his eye, would only sit three-quarter face – even though his useless, half-closed eye was not particularly repulsive.*1 Foreigners thought his eyes represented Russia, ‘the one open and the other closed, [which] reminded us of the Euxine [Black Sea] always open and the Northern Ocean so long shut up with ice’. Lampi’s portrait of him as Grand Admiral, bestriding the Black Sea, is the dynamic Potemkin that history has ignored. Lampi’s later paintings show the fuller, older face.8 But the best is the unfinished portrait of the Prince in his mid-forties – the long, artistic face, full lips, dimpled chin, thick auburn hair. By the late 1780s, his immense girth matched his giant stature.

  The Prince dominated every scene he graced. ‘Potemkin created, destroyed or confused, yet animated, everything,’ wrote Masson. ‘The nobles who detested him seemed at his glance to sink into nothing.’9 Virtually everyone who ever met him used the words ‘extraordinary’, ‘astonishing’, ‘colossus’, ‘original’ and ‘genius’ – but even those who knew him well found it hard to describe him. There was and is no way to categorize Potemkin except as one of history’s most exhilarating originals. That was, after all, how Catherine saw him. Yet the best observers are agreed only that he was ‘remarkable’ – simply a phenomenon of nature. ‘One of the most extraordinary men, as difficult to define as rare to encounter,’ thought the Duc de Richelieu. He remains, as Lewis Littlepage of Virginia wrote, ‘that indescribable man’.10

  Everything about the Prince was a study of the wildest contrasts: he was a living chiaroscuro – ‘an inconceivable mixture of grandeur and pettiness, laziness and activity, bravery and timidity, ambition and insouciance’, wrote Ségur. Sometimes he showed the ‘genius of an eagle’, sometimes ‘the fickleness of a child’. He was ‘colossal like Russia’. In his mind, ‘there were cultivated districts and deserts, the roughness of the eleventh century and the corruption of the eighteenth, the glitter of the arts and the ignorance of the cloisters’.11 On the one hand he was ‘bored with what he possessed’, on the other, he was ‘envious of what he could not obtain’. Potemkin ‘wanted everything but was disgusted by everything.’ His lust for power, wanton extravagance and towering arrogance were always made bearable by his exuberant brilliance, Puckish humour, caressing kindness, generous humanity and absence of malice. Richelieu saw that ‘his nature always carried him more towards Good than Bad’.12 The fame of the Empire was increased by his conquests – but he knew, as Ségur predicted, that ‘the admiration they excited’ was for Catherine and ‘the hatred they raised’ was for him.13

  Everything had to be complicated with Potemkin.14 His eccentricities may have irritated the Empress, but overall, Ségur noticed, they made him far more interesting to her. Richelieu thought him a man of ‘superiority’ but ‘an astonishing confection of absurdity and genius’.15 ‘At times,’ observed Littlepage, ‘he appeared worthy of ruling the Empire of Russia, at times scarcely worthy of being an office clerk in the Empire of Lilliput.’16 But the most striking feature of all his eccentricities �
�� and the one we must never forget – is that he somehow found the time and energy to conduct colossal amounts of work and almost achieve the impossible.

  * * *

  —

  The petitioners waiting his attention were accustomed to hearing the Prince’s orchestra. He liked to begin the day with music, so he would order his ever present musicians and one of his collection of choirs to perform for him. They also played during dinner at 1 p.m. and had to be ready at 6 p.m. to play wherever the Prince appeared – and they travelled with him whether he was in the Crimea or at war. Music was intensely important to him – he wrote it himself and it soothed him. Potemkin had to have music wherever he went and he often sang to himself.

  He managed the musical entertainment at Court because the Empress happily admitted to being tone-deaf. ‘Sarti, Marchese the singer and Madame Todi were the delight not of the Empress whose ear was insensible to harmony,’ Ségur remembered of one concert, ‘but of Prince Potemkin and a few enlightened music lovers…’.17 He paid 40,000 roubles for the Razumovskys’ orchestra. But his musical passion really took off when he hired the celebrated Italian composer–conductor Giuseppe Sarti in 1784. The orchestra itself, between sixty and a hundred musicians, played ‘that extraordinary music’, recalled Lady Craven, ‘performed by men and boys, each blowing a straight horn, adapted to his size. 65 of these musicians produce a very harmonious melody, something like an immense organ.’18 Potemkin made Sarti his first director of music at the unbuilt Ekaterinoslav University. His expenses show him importing horns and paying for carriages to take ‘Italian musicians Conti and Dophin’ to the south. There Potemkin gave Sarti and three of his musicians 15,000 desyatins of land: ‘I grant the village…for the four musicians…Be happy and tranquil in our country.’ Thus Potemkin settled what was surely history’s first musical colony.19