attendants, and because he preferred to sleep at ordinary inns, a palace annex was transformed into an inn and servants were costumed accordingly. Catherine’s English-Hanoverian gardener, John Busch, whose first language was German, assumed the role of innkeeper. By the time Joseph left, a regular correspondence and the foundations of a military alliance had been agreed to between the emperor and the empress. The subject of their discussions was the dismemberment and partition of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire. Catherine’s vision was of the restoration of a Greek empire under her grandson Constantine, with Constantinople as its capital. Joseph coveted the Ottoman provinces in the Balkans, along with as much as possible in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.
Joseph’s visit to Mogilev and St. Petersburg occurred in May and June 1780. In November of that year, his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, died at sixty-three, and thirty-nine-year-old Joseph became the sole ruler of Austria and the Hapsburg empire. In May 1781, Joseph signed a treaty with Catherine pledging Austria’s aid to Russia in the event of war with Turkey. The signing of this treaty marked the end of Nikita Panin’s influence on Russian foreign policy. Always an advocate of alliance with Prussia against Austria, he declared that “he could not soil his hand” by putting his name on such a treaty, and he asked permission to retire to the country. In September 1781, the aging counselor who, nineteen years before, had helped put Catherine on the throne, was dismissed.
Potemkin stepped forward in Panin’s place. The British ambassador, James Harris, still struggling to arrange a Russian alliance with England, persuaded King George III to write a warm personal letter to Catherine, but even this failed to persuade her. When Harris pressed him, Potemkin explained, “You have chosen an unlucky moment. The favorite [Lanskoy] lies dangerously ill; the cause of his illness and the uncertainty of recovery have so entirely unhinged the empress that she is incapable of employing her thoughts on any subject, and all ideas of ambition, of glory, of dignity, are absorbed in this one passion. Exhausted, she avoids everything involving activity or exertion.”
Lanskoy worsened. Harris himself developed influenza and jaundice; then Potemkin fell ill for three weeks. When this tide of illness began to ebb, Potemkin told Harris that the empress still remained partial to England. Catherine herself told Harris, “The interest I take in everything that concerns your country has made me resolve in my mind every kind of means by which I could assist you. I would do everything to serve you except involve myself in a war. I would be answerable to my subjects, my successor and perhaps to all Europe for the consequences of such a conduct.” Her position regarding an English alliance remained unchanged.
England did not give up. In October 1780, Lord Stormont at the Foreign Office instructed Harris to go back to Catherine and offer “some object worthy of her notice, a cession of territory of a nature to increase her commerce and naval strength that would persuade the empress to conclude an alliance with the king, assisting us against France and Spain, and our revolted colonies.” Harris replied, “Prince Potemkin, though he did not directly say so, clearly gave me to understand that the only cession which would induce the empress to become our ally was that of Minorca.” This island in the western Mediterranean with a fortified harbor and naval base, Port Mahon, was a treasured British possession. Harris asked for an interview with Catherine. Potemkin, arranging it, advised him, “Flatter her as much as you can. You cannot use too much unction, but flatter her for what she ought to be, not for what she is.”
When he saw the empress, Harris said: “You can demand of us whatever you like. We could not refuse anything to Your Imperial Majesty if we only knew what could please you.” Catherine remained determined not to become involved in England’s war with France, Spain, and America. The dialogue then returned to Harris and Potemkin, both still hopeful that something could be salvaged
“What can you cede to us?” Potemkin asked Harris.
“We have extensive possessions in America, in the East Indies, and on the Sugar Islands [in the Carribean],” Harris replied.
Potemkin shook his head. “You would ruin us if you gave us distant colonies. Our ships can scarce get out of the Baltic. How would you have them cross the Atlantic? If you give us anything, give us something nearer home.… If you would cede Minorca, I promise you, I believe I could lead the empress any lengths.”
Harris reported to London: “I told him … that I believed the cession he required to be impossible.”
Potemkin had replied: “So much the worse. It would insure us to you forever.”
Despite the magnitude of the gift requested and the pain that would be involved in giving it, the British government went ahead and prepared a draft of the terms of alliance that Britain wanted: “The empress of Russia shall effectuate the restoration of peace between Great Britain, France, and Spain.… It shall be an express condition that the French immediately evacuate Rhode Island and every other part of His Majesty’s colonies in North America. No agreement whatever shall be made with respect to His Majesty’s rebellious subjects.”
Catherine still would not agree. She remained convinced that the alliance treaty was an attempt to draw her and her subjects into a European war. When Potemkin went back to her, she told him:
Catherine had another reason for rejecting a treaty with England: her rapprochement with Austria had led to a formal alliance. On the strength of this alliance, she and Potemkin were preparing for the annexation of the Crimea, which both considered far more important than the acquisition of Minorca. It was Potemkin who had proposed and managed this peaceful annexation. The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardzhi, which ended the first Turkish war in 1774, had established the independence of the Crimea, but the khanate still remained a nominal vassal state of the Ottoman sultan. Potemkin worried that geographically the peninsula split Russia’s Black Sea possessions, and he explained to Catherine the difficulty of guarding her southern frontier while the Crimea remained outside her empire. “The acquisition of the Crimea can make us neither stronger nor richer, but it will ensure our peace,” he said. In July 1783, Catherine announced the annexation of the Crimean peninsula into the Russian empire. Potemkin managed this acquisition without a war or a battle, although it came at a long-term personal cost: in the Crimea, he acquired a severe case of malaria that never entirely left him during the rest of his life.
67
Crimean Journey and “Potemkin Villages”
OVER TIME, the story of Catherine the Great’s journey down the Dnieper River to the Crimea in the spring of 1787 has passed from history into legend. It has been described as the most remarkable journey ever made by a reigning monarch and as Gregory Potemkin’s greatest public triumph. It has also been disparaged as a gigantic hoax: the prosperous villages shown to the empress were said to have been made of painted cardboard; the happy villagers were declared to be costumed serfs, marched from place to place, appearing and reappearing, waving and cheering as Catherine passed by. These accusations became the basis of the myth of “Potemkin villages,” the settlements Potemkin supposedly fabricated along the Dnieper in order to deceive Catherine and her guests about the actual state of her southern territories. In time, the expression “Potemkin village” came to mean a sham, or something fraudulent, erected or spoken to conceal an unpleasant truth. As such, it became a cliche; now, it is part of the language. In evaluating the allegation, two facts should be considered. The first is that those who mocked and condemned were not present on the journey. The other is that the results of Potemkin’s work were personally observed by many eyewitnesses, including three sharp-eyed and sophisticated foreigners: the Austrian emperor, Joseph II; the French ambassador, the Comte de Segur; and the Austrian field marshal Prince Charles de Ligne.
