Catherine the Great & Potemkin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Jones duly arrived at Tsarskoe Selo, but Admiral Samuel Greig and the British officers of the Baltic fleet refused to serve with the infamous corsair, so Catherine sent Jones straight down to Elisabethgrad. On 19 May 1788, Potemkin gave Rear-Admiral Pavel Ivanovich Dzones the command of his eleven battleships, while Nassau kept the rowing flotilla.63 Jones was not the only American fighting for Potemkin: Lewis Littlepage, whom the Prince knew from Kiev, arrived as the King of Poland’s spy at Russian HQ. At the Battle of the Liman, he commanded a division of gunboats. The Prince appointed Damas, Bentham and another English volunteer, Henry Fanshawe (Potemkin called him ‘Fensch’), a gentleman from Lancashire, to command squadrons under Nassau. ‘Lieutenant-Colonels Fensch and Bentham finally agreed to serve on board the ships,’ Potemkin informed Mordvinov.

  Nassau and the other three proved inspired choices for the flotilla,64 the two Americans less so. Jones generated resentment and excitement: Fanshawe and Bentham were not impressed with the ‘celebrated, or rather notorious’, Jones and the former declared that ‘nothing but the presence of the enemy could induce us to serve with him and no consideration whatever could bring us to serve under him ‘.65 In Petersburg, Ségur wrote a very modern if flattering letter about Fame to Potemkin: ‘I did not expect having made war in America with Brave Paul Jones to meet him here so far from home but Celebrity Attracts Celebrity and I can’t be surprised to see all those who love glory…coming to associate their laurels with yours.’ But Ségur presciently begged Potemkin to be fair to Jones and never ‘condemn him without having heard him’.66

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  On 20 May 1788, Nassau saw the forest of masts of the Ottoman fleet in the Liman off Ochakov. ‘We have to make a dance with the Capitan-Pasha,’ Nassau boasted to his wife.67 He swore to Damas that, in two months, he would either be dead or wearing the cross of St George.68

  Ghazi Hassan-Pasha, the Capitan-Pasha, commanded eighteen ships-of-the-line, forty frigates and scores of rowing galleys that brought his flotilla to over 109 ships, considerably more than the Russians in numbers and tonnage.69 The Capitan-Pasha himself, renegade son of a Georgian Orthodox servant on the Barbary Coast, was the outstanding Ottoman warrior of the later eighteenth century, the latest in the tradition of the Algerian pirates who had come to the Sultan’s rescue. The ‘Algerine renegado’, instantly recognizable by his ‘fine white beard’, had seen the inferno of Chesme and rushed back to protect Istanbul; defeated the Egyptian rebellions against the Sultan; and won the nickname ‘the Crocodile of Sea Battles’.70 He was the darling of the Istanbul mob. When Lady Craven visited his house in 1786, she recounted the magnificence of his lifestyle and bounty of diamonds in his wife’s turban.71 He was always accompanied by a pet lion that lay down at his command.

  Potemkin, again suffering an attack of nerves, wondered if he should evacuate the Crimea. ‘When you are sitting on a horse,’ Catherine replied, ‘there is no point in getting off it and holding on by the tail.’ Potemkin sought reassurance from his Empress rather than actual evacuation – and that was what she gave him.72

  The Liman or estuary of the Dnieper was a long, arrow and treacherous bay that stretched thirty miles towards the west before it opened into the Black Sea. It was only eight miles wide, but its mouth was just two miles across. The south shore was Russian, ending in Kinburn’s narrow spit, but its mouth was dominated by the massive fortifications of the Ottoman fortress of Ochakov. It was of great strategic importance because Ochakov was the principal Russian war aim of the first campaign. But it could not be taken if the Ottomans controlled the Liman. Furthermore, the loss of the battle would leave the Turks free to attack Kinburn again, advance fifteen miles upstream to Kherson and possibly take the Crimea. Potemkin’s strategy was to win naval control of the Liman and then besiege mighty Ochakov, which would open communications between Kherson and Sebastopol, protect the Crimea and win a new expanse of coastline. So all depended on the Prince de Nassau-Siegen, Rear-Admiral John Paul Jones and the Crocodile of Sea Battles.

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  On 27 May, Potemkin marched out of Elisabethgrad with his army as the Capitan-Pasha gathered his fleet. On the morning of 7 June, the Capitan-Pasha advanced along the Liman with his rowing flotilla backed by his warships. It was a gorgeous and impressive sight – ‘better than a ball at Warsaw’, thought Nassau, ‘and I’m persuaded we’ll have as much fun as Prince Sapieha dancing “l’Allemande” ’. Nassau and Damas showed each other portraits of their women back home. The Turks opened fire. While Jones’s squadron was held back by a contrary wind, Nassau used the light Zaporogian chaiki on his left to attack them all along the line. The Turks withdrew in chaos. The Capitan-Pasha fired on his own retreating forces. He was, after all, the man who had solved the problem of lazy firefighting in Istanbul by tossing four firemen into a blaze pour encourager les autres.

  Nassau and Jones ordered their respective fleets to give chase. Bentham, who was commanding a division of seven galleys and two gunboats, saw his heavy artillery win the day but got his eyebrows singed when one of his cannons exploded.73 The First Battle of the Liman was more of a stalemate than a rout – but it was encouraging.

  ‘It comes from God!’, exclaimed Serenissimus, whose army was camped at Novy Grigory, where he had consecrated a church to his patron St George. He embraced Ligne.74 Surprisingly in a man notorious for his indolence, Potemkin’s concept of command was all-embracing and was combined with a mastery of detail. He supervised the flotilla’s manoeuvring, its formations and the signalling codes between ships and Kinburn. He thought first about the ordinary men: he ordered Nassau to let each man have a portion of eau de vie (spirits) daily and he specified that meals were to be served on time, always hot, and had to include vegetable soup and meat on holy days. When summer came, the men were to wash daily. But most remarkable were his views on discipline. ‘I am entirely persuaded’, he wrote, that ‘sentiments of humanity’ contributed to the health of the troops and their service. ‘To succeed in this, I recommend you to forbid the beating of people. The best remedy is to explain exactly and clearly what you have done.’ Contemporaries saw Potemkin’s humanity and generosity to his men as mad, indulgent and dangerous. This would have been regarded as mollycoddling in the Royal Navy half a century later.75

  Nassau and Jones became rabid enemies: the reckless paladin was not impressed with Jones’s sensible preservation of his ships, while Jones thought Nassau hated him because he had ‘extracted him out of his foul-up and peril’.76 Both complained to the Prince, who tried to keep the peace while secretly backing Nassau. ‘It is to you alone’, he wrote two days later, ‘I attribute this victory.’77 But he also ordered him to get on with Jones: ‘Moderate a little your fine ardour.’78

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  On 16 June, the Crocodile decided to overcome the stalemate by bringing his entire fleet, including battleships, into the Liman. ‘Nothing could present a more formidable front that this line extending from shore to shore,’ wrote Fanshawe, so densely packed that he could see no interval between their sails. The attack was imminent. That night, after the arrival of another twenty-two Russian gunboats, Nassau called a council of war. Jones declared, ‘I see in your eyes the souls of heroes,’ but advised caution. Nassau lost his temper, telling the American he could stay behind with his ships if he liked, and ordered a dawn pre-emptive strike. The two admirals were now fighting their own private war.

  Damas led the assault on the right with his galleys, gun-batteries and bomb-ketches, while Bentham and Fanshawe backed by Jones’s battleships, Vladimir and Alexander attacked the hulking Turkish ships-of-the-line. The Turks advanced towards them blowing trumpets, clashing cymbals and shouting to Allah but, rattled by the Russian pre-emptive strike, they soon tried to retreat. The flagships of their Vice-Admiral and then Ghazi Hassan himself became stuck on shoals. Damas’ gunboats pounced on them, but Turkish fire m
anaged to sink a smaller Russian boat. When Jones noticed the shoals, he stopped the pursuit with his ships-of-the-line. Prudence won him no friends. Bentham, Fanshawe and the rest pursued in their lighter gunboats. But the pièce de résistance came in the afternoon when Damas succeeded in destroying the Crocodile’s flagship. Its explosion was ‘a magnificent spectacle’, recalled Fanshawe.79 The ‘Algerine renegado’ continued to command from the nearby spit. As night fell, the young Englishmen stepped up their chase. The Turks withdrew beneath the guns of Ochakov, leaving behind two destroyed ships-of-the-line and six gunboats.

  Overnight, the old Crocodile withdrew the battleships that had lost him the battle, but as they passed the Kinburn spit Suvorov opened up with a battery, positioned for just such an opportunity. The two battleships and five frigates tried to avoid the bombardment but instead ran aground. They were clearly visible in the moonlight. During this lull, Jones made a secret reconnaissance and wrote in chalk on one warship’s stern: ‘To be Burned. Paul Jones 17/28 June’. Jones, Bentham and Damas rowed over to Nassau’s flagship. There was another row between the admirals. ‘I know how to capture ships as well as you!’, shouted Nassau. ‘I have proved my ability to capture ships that are not Turkish,’ replied Jones pointedly. It was comments like this that made him enemies who would stop at nothing to destroy him.80

  Nassau and the young bloods decided to attack. Off they went helter-skelter in their boats to bombard these beached whales. ‘We had about as much discipline’, wrote Bentham, ‘as the London mob.’ Samuel fired so many shells that he could not even see his targets for the smoke. He captured one ship-of-the-line, but the ‘London mob’ was so keen for blood that they blew up the other Turkish ships with 3,000 of their rowing slaves still chained on board. Their screams must have been appalling. ‘Dead bodies were floating around for a fortnight afterwards,’ Samuel told his father.81 The rest of the fleet took refuge beneath the walls of Ochakov. The Capitan-Pasha executed a selection of his officers.82

  ‘Our victory is complete – my flotilla did it!’, declared Nassau, soi-disant ‘Master of the Liman’. In two days of the Second Battle of the Liman, the Turks had lost ten warships and five galleys with 1,673 prisoners and over 3,000 dead, while the Russians had lost just one frigate, eighteen dead and sixty-seven wounded. Damas was given the honour of taking the news to the Prince, waiting at Novy Grigory to cross the Bug.83 This time Potemkin was beside himself. He kissed Ligne all over again: ‘What did I tell you of Novy Grigory? Here again! Isn’t it amazing? I’m the spoilt child of God.’ Ligne coolly commented that this was ‘the most extraordinary man there ever was’.84 The Prince of Taurida exulted, ‘The boats beat the ships. I’ve gone mad with joy!’85

  That night, the jubilant Potemkin arrived from the shore to dine with Nassau and Lewis Littlepage on Jones’s flagship, the Vladimir. Potemkin’s flag as grand admiral of the Black Sea and Caspian Fleets was piped up. Nassau and Jones were still at daggers drawn. ‘So brilliant in the second rank,’ Nassau commented of Jones, ‘eclipsed in the first.’86 The Prince–Marshal persuaded Nassau to apologize to the touchy American, but he was sure that the victories belonged to Nassau. ‘It was all his work,’ he reported to Catherine. As for the ‘pirate’ Jones, he was not ‘a comrade-in-arms’.87 The victory truly owed more to Bentham’s artillery than to Nassau’s ‘mob’. Naturally Samuel thought so, and he was promoted to colonel,*9 and awarded the St George with a gold-hilted sword.88 Catherine sent Potemkin a golden sword ‘garnished with three big diamonds, the most beautiful thing possible’, and a golden plate engraved ‘To Field-Marshal Prince Potemkin of Taurida, commander of the land army and sea army victorious on the Liman and creator of the fleet’.89 The prickly Jones got less than the brazen Nassau: the snub was clear. The chastened Crocodile of Sea Battles put to sea with the remains of his fleet.

  Just when things were going so well, dangerous news arrived from Catherine: Gustavus III of Sweden had attacked Russia on 21 June, providing his own pretext by staging an attack against his own frontier, using Swedish troops in Russian uniforms.90 Before leaving Stockholm to lead his troops in Finland, Gustavus boasted he would soon be taking ‘luncheon in St Petersburg’. The capital was exposed, for the crack Russian forces were in the south, though Potemkin had left an observation corps guarding the border, and sent Kalmyks and Bashkirs, with their spears and bows and arrows, to scare the Swedes. (They scared the Russians just as much.) Fortunately, the Baltic Fleet, under Greig, had not left to fight the Turks in the Mediterranean. Potemkin appointed Count Musin-Pushkin to command the Finnish front against Gustavus. Soon afterwards, Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky arrived in Petersburg to exploit the Prince’s supposed negligence – an experience Catherine compared to having a ‘load of snow’91 landing on her head. Petersburg soon felt as if it was a fortified town, she reported. The first sea battle on 6 July at Gothland was a victory for Russia, ‘so my friend’, she told her consort, ‘I’ve also smelt powder’.92 But Gustavus was still advancing on land. In one of those moments when Potemkin envisaged ruthless evacuations of people, he half jokingly suggested depopulating Finland, dispersing its people and making it into a wasteland.93

  Unfortunately, Sweden was just the tip of the iceberg. England, Holland and Prussia were about to sign a Triple Alliance that would turn out to be strongly anti-Russian. France was paralysed by imminent revolution. But Catherine found herself astride the two faultlines of Europe – Russia versus Turkey and Austria versus Prussia. The jealous Prussia, under its new king Frederick William, was determined to squeeze advantage out of Russo-Austrian prizes against the Turks and keen to feast again on the juicy cake of Poland – a menu of desires that the Prussian Chancellor Count von Hertzberg would bring together in his eponymous Plan. Austria felt exposed to Prussian attack in its rear, but Russia assured Joseph this would not be allowed to happen. The pressure increased on Potemkin again; Russia was back in crisis.94

  On 1 July, Potemkin led his army across the Bug to invest Ochakov, while Nassau launched a raid on the ships left under its walls: after another battle, the Turks abandoned the ships and scampered back into the fortress. Two hours later, Fanshawe heard Potemkin attack the town.95 Serenissimus mounted his horse and advanced on Ochakov at the head of 13,000 Cossacks and 4,000 Hussars. The garrison welcomed them with a barrage followed by the sortie of 600 Spahis and 300 infantry. The Prince immediately placed twenty cannon on the plain beneath the fortress and stood personally directing the fire, ‘where all the immense diamonds of the beautiful portrait of the Empress that is always in his buttonhole, attracted fire’. Two horses and a cart driver were killed beside him.

  Ligne acclaimed Potemkin’s ‘beautiful valour’, but Catherine was unimpressed. ‘If you kill yourself,’ she wrote, ‘you kill me too. Show me the mercy of forbearing from such fun in the future.’96 So began the siege of Ochakov.

  Skip Notes

  *1 Withdrawal of the 26 battalions of infantry, 22 squadrons of cavalry and 5 Cossack regiments, all cooped up in the Crimea, was not the cowardice of a hysteric, but sound military sense. Potemkin planned to let the Turks land on the peninsula before destroying them in a land battle. (This was precisely what Suvorov did on a smaller scale at Kinburn). Once the danger of a landing was over, they could have been moved, but Catherine rejects the idea for political reasons.

  *2 Later, Suvorov became more than famous: he became Prince of Italy, a European star fighting the Revolutionary French in Italy and Switzerland. By 1799, he was the peerless Russian idol and remained so until 1917. Then in 1941, Stalin restored him to the status of national hero and instituted the Order of Suvorov. Soviet historians reinvented him as a people’s hero. The result of this cult is that even today Suvorov is given credit for much actually done by Potemkin.

  *3 This was just the first of the many occasions when Ligne’s criticisms, widely propagated and accepted by history as truth, were factually wrong and based on his Austrian partisa
nship. His rightly famous accounts of Potemkin at war, which he repeated in his fine letters to Joseph, Ségur and the Marquise de Coigny and thus to the whole of Europe, never deliberately lied but they have to be read in the context of his job, which was to spy on his friend, and persuade him to take the heat off his own Emperor. He was also bitterly disappointed not to be given his own command.

  *4 History hangs on such petty questions of rank. Count Fyodor Rostopchin, later the Governor of Moscow who burned the city in 1812, claimed in his La Verité sur l’Incendie de Moscow to have seen it: ‘I’ve held this letter in my hands several times.’ He regretted that Bonaparte did not join the Russian army.

  *5 One wonders what happened to these Jewish Cossacks. Six years later, in 1794, Polish Jews raised a force of 500 light cavalry to fight the Russians. Their colonel Berek (Berko) Joselewicz joined Napoleon’s Polish Legion in 1807. Berek won the Légion d’Honneur, but died fighting the Austrians in 1809. Did any of Potemkin’s Jewish Cossacks fight for Napoleon? Later in the mid-nineteenth century, the great Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz formed another Jewish cavalry regiment called the Hussars of Israel among Polish exiles in Istanbul. A Lieutenant Michal Horenstein even designed an elegant grey uniform. During the Crimean War, the Jewish horsemen fought with the remaining Ottoman Cossacks against the Russians outside Sebastopol.