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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 cliché; 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 Ségur; and the Austrian field marshal Prince Charles de Ligne. Over two centuries, no one has produced any evidence that what these three said and wrote about their journey was untrue.
For nine years Potemkin had worked to transform the newly acquired areas of southern Russia into a prosperous part of Catherine’s empire. Proud of what he had achieved, he had been urging the empress to come and see what he had done. Finally, she agreed to come in the spring and summer of 1787, the year of her silver jubilee, the twenty-fifth anniversary of her accession to the throne. The planning and preparation of Catherine’s Crimean journey began. It was to be the longest journey of her life and the most spectacular public spectacle of her reign. For more than six months and over four thousand miles, she traveled by land and water, by sledge, river galley, and carriage. In doing this, she confirmed the future of this vast region. From the year of her journey until the German invasion in 1941, and then the independence of Ukraine in 1991, these lands never passed from Russian hands.
The Crimean Peninsula, which Potemkin most wanted the empress to see, had a history embracing many peoples and cultures. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Greeks had established colonies along the Crimean coast. Then called the Taurus, it was the site where Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is said to have served as a priestess in the Temple of Diana. Three hundred years later, these Greek colonies became part of the Roman Empire; later, the Crimea was conquered and occupied by the Mongols. When Catherine annexed the peninsula in 1783, she instructed Potemkin to build roads, cities, and ports, enrich and broaden agriculture, and integrate the Muslim population into her empire without destroying their religion or culture. Potemkin then built cities, created parks, and planted vineyards and botanical gardens. He brought in cattle, silkworms, mulberries, and melon seeds. He began building warships, and at Kherson, Nikolaev, and on the Bay of Sebastopol he constructed naval bases for the new Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Catherine was eager to see and know these lands about which she had heard so much, and in which she had invested so many rubles. She also had diplomatic reasons for going: she wished to impress Europe and intimidate the Turks. On her journey, she would be meeting a king and an emperor: Stanislaus of Poland and Joseph II of Austria. Stanislaus, her former lover, was to join her at a point where the Dnieper River constituted the border between Russia and Poland. Joseph, her ally, had been persuaded to come so that together they could advertise the strength of the Russo-Austrian alliance. Her journey, therefore, was to be simultaneously a pleasure trip, a royal inspection, and a strong diplomatic statement.
Catherine was fifty-eight when she began this journey, and it was an unusual effort for a woman of her age to undertake. It displayed not only her vitality and enthusiasm but also her trust in the mastermind who for three years had been planning this enterprise. Once on her way, she said to Ségur:
Everything was done to deter me from this journey. I was assured that my progress would be bristling with obstacles and unpleasantness. They wished to frighten me with stories of the fatigue of the journey. These people had a very poor knowledge of me. They do not know that to oppose me is to encourage me, and that every difficulty they put in my way is an additional spur.
Primarily, she wanted to endorse and set her imperial seal on Potemkin’s achievements in the south. For years, his enemies at court had belittled his efforts, asserting that he had wasted or stolen the vast sums, now millions of rubles, allotted for the development of these new territories. Potemkin himself knew that the success of Catherine’s journey would make him unassailable—and that failure would ruin him. He knew also that the courts of Europe would be watching. He urged, therefore, that Catherine bring with her the foreign ambassadors stationed in St. Petersburg so that they could report to their governments what they had seen.
Potemkin hurled himself and all of his talents for organization and showmanship into this enormous effort. He decided where the immense imperial caravan would stop every night. He erected or borrowed houses, mansions, and palaces to accommodate the travelers. He chose sites for balls, fireworks, and celebrations. He ordered the construction of a fleet of large, luxurious galleys to carry the empress and her guests down the Dnieper River. He had guidebooks printed giving detailed descriptions of the towns and villages the galleys would pass and naming the distances the fleet would travel each day.
Catherine made up the guest list. There were omissions. The Prussian ambassador was not included because the death of Frederick the Great a year before had brought his nephew, Frederick William, to the throne in Berlin, and the nephew’s dislike of Catherine was warmly reciprocated. The Saxon ambassador, Georg von Helbig, was left behind because he had made a practice of denigrating Potemkin and his achievements.
More conspicuous were the absentees from among the members of Catherine’s own family. Until the last minute, she planned to take her two oldest grandchildren, ten-year-old Alexander and eight-year-old Constantine. She wanted them to see the territories, the towns, and the fleet she was adding to their inheritance. But as the time to depart drew closer, the protests of the boys’ parents grew louder. The usually serene Maria Fyodorovna became almost hysterical at the thought of her sons traveling to a region where plague and malaria were perennial hazards. Dr. Rogerson supported her. Catherine persisted, arguing that it was cruel to let a grandmother go off on a long journey without a single member of her own family to accompany her. To Paul and Maria, she wrote: “Your children belong to you, they belong to me, they belong to the state. From their earliest childhood, I have made it my duty and my pleasure to give them the tenderest care. I reasoned as follows: it will be a consolation for me, when I am far from you, to have them near me. Am I to be the only one who is deprived, in my old age, for six months, of the pleasure of having some member of my family with me?” Receipt of this letter only made Maria more desperate. Paul then suggested that both he and Maria as well as their sons should accompany his mother. Or, if this was not acceptable, he offered to be the only family member to go with her. He was, after all, heir to the throne; presumably the lands to be visited would one day be his to rule. Why should he not see them? This suggestion, like the other, was coldly rejected. “Your latest proposal would cause the greatest of upsets,” she wrote. The truth was that she did not want the “heavy baggage” of Paul’s presence to detract from her enjoyment of Potemkin’s triumph.
In the end, the question became moot. On the eve of departure, both grandsons developed chicken pox. Six doctors had to be summoned to testify to this fact before Catherine surrendered and agreed that her grandsons should stay home. Paul, too, remained behind, embittered because he had not been delegated any authority over anything during her absence.
On New Years Day 1787, Catherine received the diplomatic corps at the Winter Palace, and then drove to Tsarskoe Selo. At eleven in the morning on January 7, in brilliant sunshine and bitter cold, she left Tsarskoe Selo in the first of fourteen large, comfortable carriages mounted on broad runners to convert them into sledges. Catherine’s carriage had seats for six, and she began the journey riding with her current favorite, Alexander Mamonov, Lev Naryshkin, Ivan Shuvalov, and a lady-in-waiting. All were wrapped in soft furs, with bearskins draped over their laps. Behind her, other carriage-sledges carried the foreign ambassadors, members of the court, government officials, and her personal staff. Aware that, despite the traditional hostility between their two countries, they liked each other privately, she had placed the French and English ambassadors, Philippe de Ségur and Alleyne Fitzherbert (later Lord St. Helens), in the same carriage. One hundred twenty-four smaller sleighs and sledges followed, carrying doctors, apothecaries, musicians, cooks, engineers, hairdressers, silver polishers, washerwomen, and scores of other male and female servants.
In January in northern Russia, everything vanishes beneath a deep blanket of whiteness. Rivers, fields, trees, roads, and houses disappear, and the landscape becomes a white sea of mounds and hollows. On days when the sky is gray, it is hard to see where earth merges with air. On brilliant days when the sky is a rich blue, the sunlight is blinding, as if millions of diamonds were scattered on the snow, refracting light. In Catherine’s time, the log roads of summer were covered with a smooth coating of snow and ice that enabled the sledges to glide smoothly at startling speeds; on some days, her procession covered a hundred miles. “It was a time,” wrote Ségur, “when every animal stayed in its stable, every peasant by his stove, and the only sign of human life were the convoys of sleighs passing like small ships over a frozen sea.” In those northern latitudes at this time of year, daylight lasts no more than six hours, but this did not hinder Catherine’s progress. When darkness fell in the afternoon—as early as three o’clock on the first days of the journey—the road was illuminated by bonfires and blazing torches.
Travel did not alter Catherine’s daily schedule. She rose at six as she did in St. Petersburg, drank coffee, and then worked alone or with her secretary or ministers for two hours. At eight, she summoned her close friends to breakfast, and at nine, she entered her carriage to resume the journey. At two, she halted for midday dinner, then resumed an hour later. At seven, long after the fall of darkness, she stopped for the night. Usually, Catherine was not tired and would go back to work or join her companions for conversation, cards, or games until ten.
Speeding over the snow, Catherine shuffled the passengers in her sledge in order to shift topics and diversify her amusement. Frequently, Ségur and Fitzherbert were exchanged for Naryshkin and Shuvalov. Ségur, sophisticated and intelligent, a born storyteller, was her favorite. She laughed at most of what he said, but, at one point, he discovered the limits of her tolerance:
One day when I was sitting opposite her in her carriage, she indicated to me the desire to hear some snippets of light verse which I had composed. The gentle familiarity which she permitted to the people who were traveling with her, the presence of her young favorite, her gaiety, her correspondence with … Voltaire and Diderot, had made me think that she could not be shocked by the liberty of a love story and so I recited one to her which was admittedly a little risqué, but nevertheless decent enough to have been well received by ladies in Paris.
To my great surprise, I suddenly saw my laughing traveling companion reassume the face of a majestic sovereign, interrupt me with a completely unrelated question, and so change the subject of conversation. Several minutes later, to make her aware that I had learned my lesson, I begged her to listen to another piece of verse of a very different nature, to which she paid the kindest attention.
In Smolensk, the journey was delayed for four days by massive snowdrifts and by a feverish sore throat that had stricken Mamonov. But a letter from Potemkin, still in the Crimea, urged Catherine on: “Here, the greenery in the meadows is starting to break through,” he said. “I think the flowers are coming soon.”
On January 29 the cavalcade reached Kiev, standing on the high, west bank of the Dnieper River. The empress, whose only previous visit had been forty-three years earlier when she was a fifteen-year-old grand duchess accompanying Empress Elizabeth, was welcomed with saluting cannon and pealing bells. Each ambassador was assigned his own palace or mansion, handsomely furnished, staffed with servants and stocked with excellent wines. At night, there were games, music, and dancing. Catherine often played whist with Ségur and Mamonov.
Potemkin arrived from the Crimea. At first, he remained in seclusion, away from all the excitement he had created, declaring that he intended to observe Lent in the company of monks rather than courtiers and diplomats. He chose the Pecherskaya Lavra, the famous Monastery of the Caves, hollowed out of the cliff rising from the river. Here, in a labyrinth of caves and low, narrow tunnels, seventy-three mummified saints lay in open niches, close enough for passersby to reach out and touch. Catherine, knowing Potemkin’s moods, warned, “Avoid the prince when you see him looking like an angry wolf.” The cause of the prince’s behavior was worry; in overseeing this journey he had accepted an enormous responsibility, and the most difficult parts lay ahead.
Along with Potemkin, another new traveler joined the party at Kiev. This was Prince Charles de Ligne, a fifty-year-old Belgian-born aristocrat, now an Austrian field marshal in the service of Emperor Joseph II. Arriving from Vienna, Ligne was a welcome addition. A European cosmopolitan, at ease corresponding with Voltaire or Marie Antoinette, he was witty, wise, sophisticated, cynical, and sentimental, and, at the same time, diplomatic and discreet. A friend of sovereigns and princes, affectionate with equals, popular with inferiors, he put everyone at ease. He was delighted to be invited by Catherine, whom he later described as “the greatest genius of her age.” Of all Catherine’s guests on the journey, Ligne remained most consistently in favor, not only with Catherine but with everyone else. Catherine herself described him as “the pleasantest company and the easiest person to live with that I have ever met.” When his master, friend, and confidant Joseph II joined the party, Ligne was asked to share the imperial carriage and overhear the conversation between the two monarchs. Ligne joined in when asked to do so; the other occupant, Alexander Mamonov, too bored to listen, slept.
Catherine and her guests remained in Kiev for six weeks. Thereafter, the journey was to be resumed in large galleys built for the voyage down the river. On April 22, cannon signaled that the ice on the river had cracked. At noon, the empress and her guests boarded seven opulently decorated and furnished Roman-style galleys, all painted in red and gold, with the Russian imperial double eagle emblazoned on their sides. Catherine’s galley, named Dnieper, had a bedroom hung with gold and scarlet silk brocade, a drawing room, a library, a music room, and a dining room. A private canopied deck offered her the opportunity to take the air while avoiding the sun. The six galleys following hers were almost as luxurious: also painted red and gold with interiors lined with expensive brocades. Potemkin’s galley housed the prince, no longer an “angry wolf,” two of his nieces and their husbands, and his new friend, the raffish soldier of fortune Prince Charles de Nassau-Siegen. This forty-two-year-old Franco-German, the impoverished heir to a tiny principality, had sailed around the world, fought on land and sea, married a Polish woman, and then come to Russia, where he had met Potemkin. Catherine was dubious. “It is odd that you like Prince Nassau considering his universal reputation as a hothead,” she told Potemkin. “Still, it’s well known that he is brave.”
On the day of embarkation, with the galleys still tethered to the shore, Catherine invited fifty guests to dine on board the special dining galley. At three in the afternoon, the fleet cast off and headed downstream with the seven large galleys followed by eighty smaller vessels carrying three thousand people who serviced this unusual flotilla. At six, a smaller number of guests were rowed back to the empress’s private galley for supper; this became the habitual pattern during the days to come.
Under a blue sky, with the river sparkling in sunlight, painted oars dipped rhythmically into the river and this “Cleopatra’s fleet,” as Ligne christened it, moved down the Dnieper. Travel along the great river waterways was normal in Russia, but no one had ever seen anything like this, and crowds of people stood on the banks, watching and waving as the galleys swept by. The fleet passed meadows carpeted with spring wildflowers, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and villages with churches and houses gleaming with new paint. As the large galleys passed by, a swarm of little boats darted among the larger vessels, carrying visitors from one to another, transporting wine and food as well as musicians who played at meals and evening concerts. By day, Catherine would lie on the deck of her galley under her silken awning. For her guests and those passengers who were not on the empress’s working staff, the mornings were free and passengers visited one another, talked business, gossiped, and played cards. At midday, the empress’s galley fired a gun to announce dinner; sometimes it would be for only ten guests who were rowed to her galley; sometimes for fifty, summoned to the special dining galley. Often, the fleet stopped and anchored so that the passengers could picnic or simply walk along the riverbanks.
Six days brought the fleet to Kaniev, a point on the Dnieper where the east bank was Russian and the west bank Polish. Here Catherine was to meet Stanislaus Ponitowski, whom she had created king of Poland. The two had not seen each other since 1759, twenty-eight years earlier. Even now, at fifty-six, Stanislaus remained handsome, sensitive, cultured—and also well-meaning and weak. But Catherine was uneasy. At fifty-nine, she was aware of how the years had affected her own appearance, and she was not looking forward to subjecting herself to the gaze of a former lover.
When the fleet anchored off Kaniev, the king was rowed out to Catherine’s galley. The morning had seen gusts of wind and rain, and the king’s clothing was sodden when he came aboard. Catherine received him with state honors, and Stanislaus responded with his old sophistication. As king, he was forbidden by the Polish constitution to leave Polish soil; accordingly, he had assumed a temporary incognito. Bowing to those who received him on deck, he said, “Gentlemen, the king of Poland has asked me to commend Count Poniatowski to your care.”
Catherine was cool. Stanislaus now seemed insipid, his manners too exquisite, his compliments excessively elegant and long-winded. As Catherine wrote to Grimm, “It was thirty years since I’d seen him and you can imagine that we found each other changed.” She presented him to her ministers and foreign guests and then, walking stiffly, retired with him for a private half-hour talk. When they returned, her manner was strained and his eyes were sad. At dinner, Ségur sat opposite the empress and the king and later he recorded, “They spoke little, but each was watching the other. We listened to an excellent orchestra and drank the king’s health to a salvo of artillery fire.” On departing, the king, rising from the table, could not find his hat. Catherine handed it to him. Stanislaus thanked her and, smiling, said that it was the second article of headgear she had given him; the first had been the crown of Poland.
He tried and failed to persuade her to prolong her visit and remain his guest for several days. He had arranged dinners and a ball in her honor at a palace he had built especially for the occasion. She declined, having already resolved that their reunion should not exceed a single day. Stanislaus was told that she had to meet the Emperor Joseph II in Kherson, downstream; the emperor would be waiting and her schedule could not be changed. Potemkin, who liked Stanislaus, was annoyed, and warned her that her refusal would undermine the king’s position in Poland. Catherine was adamant: “I know of our guest’s desire that I remain here for another day or two, but you yourself know that this is impossible, given my meeting with the emperor. Kindly let him know, in a polite manner, that there is no possibility of making changes in my journey. And moreover, as you yourself know, I find any change in plan disagreeable.” When Potemkin continued to argue, she grew testy: “The dinner proposed for tomorrow was suggested without any regard for what is possible.… When I make a decision there’s a reason for it … and so I’m leaving tomorrow as planned.… I’m truly tired of this!” To appease Potemkin, she permitted her guests to attend the first of Stanislaus’s balls, to be given that night, but she remained on her galley and watched the fireworks from the deck, attended by Mamonov. The following morning, the galley fleet sailed at dawn. To Potemkin, Catherine said, “The king bores me.” She never saw Stanislaus again.
Meanwhile, downriver in Kherson, Joseph had arrived and was waiting. A man who loved to travel unencumbered, Joseph was once again traveling incognito as Count Falkenstein. With little baggage, and accompanied by a single equerry and two servants, he usually arrived early on his travels. In Kherson, he tired of waiting and decided to go upriver by land to meet Catherine in Kaidek, where her fleet of galleys would halt on reaching the first of the Dnieper cataracts. When the galleys arrived in Kaidek, Catherine was informed that Count Falkenstein was waiting downriver at Kherson. Soon, further news arrived that he was already on his way by road to meet her. Determined not to be outdone, Catherine hastily disembarked and hurried by carriage to intercept her ally. The two met by the road, and, riding together in her carriage, returned the twenty miles to Kaidek. Joining her traveling party, Joseph insisted on maintaining his incognito, attending the empress’s levees with other gentlemen of the court, and always being introduced as Count Falkenstein. He was delighted to see his friend and army commander, Ligne, and to strike up a new friendship with Ségur. He spoke admiringly to the French ambassador about the vitality of the extraordinary woman ten years his senior who had become his ally, but he had few compliments for Mamonov. “The new favorite is good-looking,” Joseph wrote, “but does not appear to be very brilliant and seems astonished to find himself in this position. He is really no more than a spoiled child.”
After twenty-four hours at Kaidek, Catherine and Joseph left to the courtiers and diplomats the pleasure of shooting the rapids by galley, and traveled together by carriage to the site where Potemkin intended to build the new city of Ekaterinoslav. There, with Joseph at her side, Catherine laid the foundation stone of the city’s new cathedral. The emperor, dubious about building a large church before there was a town or a population, wrote to a friend in Vienna, “I performed a great deed today. The empress laid the first stone of a new church, and I laid—the last.”
Once the galleys had passed safely through the rapids and the two sovereigns reembarked, they made their entry into Kherson by water. Nine years before, when Potemkin had first chosen this site twenty miles up the estuary from the Black Sea, Kherson had been no more than a few huts in a marsh. Now it was a fortified city with two thousand white houses, straight streets, shade trees, flower gardens, churches and public buildings, barracks for twenty thousand men, crowds in the streets, shops filled with goods, and a thriving shipyard with warehouses along the quays and two completed ships of the line and a frigate ready to be launched. More than a hundred ships, many of them Russian, were riding at anchor in the port. On May 15, Catherine and Joseph launched the three warships, including the ship of the line Vladimir and a powerful eighty-gun ship of the line diplomatically named St. Joseph.
The proximity of the Turks loomed in the minds of both sovereigns. They saw the arch Potemkin had erected over the entrance to the town, provocatively emblazoned with the inscription in Greek “This is the way to Byzantium.” They met Yakov Bulgakov, the Russian minister in Constantinople, who had come to report to the empress and remind her of what she and Potemkin already knew: that the Ottoman Empire had never fully accepted the annexation of the Crimea or, indeed, any Russian presence on the Black Sea. The Turks were only biding their time, Bulgakov warned. Catherine and Potemkin understood, and because Russia would not be ready for war for at least two years, they urged Bulgakov to be conciliatory.
Catherine herself was now obliged to be cautious. Originally, she had hoped to travel the full length of the Dnieper, which meant going from Kherson down the estuary all the way to the Black Sea. The Turks forestalled this final stage of her river voyage by sending four men-of-war and ten frigates to cruise in the estuary. It was a reminder that the Dnieper was not yet fully open.
Despite this disappointment, Catherine was determined to impress her imperial ally and the foreign ambassadors by taking them on a tour of the Crimea. Leaving Kherson and the Dnieper on May 21, they traveled overland by carriage. Once out on the steppe, Joseph was astonished when twelve hundred Tartar horsemen suddenly appeared in a cloud of dust; here were tribesmen, only recently conquered, now considered to be sufficiently loyal to serve as an imperial guard of honor. Impressed by what he was seeing, Joseph left the encampment at dusk one evening and walked with Ségur out into the flat wasteland of grass stretching to the horizon. “What a peculiar land,” the emperor said. “And who could have expected to see me with Catherine the Second, and the French and English ambassadors wandering through a Tatar desert? What a page of history!”
Passing through the Perekop Isthmus connecting the Crimean Peninsula with Ukraine and Russia to the north, the procession of carriages rolled down the steep, rocky road leading to Bakhchisarai, the former capital of the Crimean khans. Here, the private apartments in the palace of the khans became the temporary residence of the two visiting monarchs. Months before, Catherine had sent Charles Cameron, her Scottish architect, to repair and decorate the palace. Cameron had preserved the atmosphere of Islam. There were inner courts and secret gardens enclosed by high walls and hedges of myrtle. There were cool, uncluttered rooms with tiled walls in glowing colors, thick carpets, elaborate tapestries, and, in the center of every room, a marble fountain. Through her open windows, Catherine could see minarets rising above the walls and breathe the scents of roses, jasmine, orange trees, and pomegranates. Surrounding the palace was the town, dominated by nineteen mosques and their high minarets, from which, five times a day, voices summoned the faithful to prayer; while she was there, Catherine ordered the construction of two new mosques. Outside, too, were other sights, sounds, and smells of Islam: teeming street bazaars; Tatar princes and men in flowing robes; their wives and other women, covered except for their eyes.
Because Potemkin was eager to show Catherine and the emperor what he considered his greatest achievement in the south, they spent only three days and two nights in Bakhchisarai. On May 22, they drove across the mountains through forests of cypress and pine to the rugged headlands of the Crimea’s Black Sea south coast. Here they entered a lush, Riviera-like region of mild temperatures the year around, with olive trees, orchards, vineyards, pastures, and gardens of jasmine, laurel, lilacs, wisteria, roses, and violets. Every spring, the sudden, massive flowering of fruit trees, shrubs, vines, and wildflowers, with their swirl of colors and odors, transformed the coast into a vast perfumed garden.
Their destination was Inkerman, on the heights overlooking the Black Sea, where they dined in a new pavilion. After a midday banquet, Potemkin stood and drew back the curtains at one end of the room. Before them, under the cloudless blue Crimean sky, the travelers saw an amphitheater of rugged mountain peaks rising from emerald blue waters. This was the great bay of Sebastopol, glittering in the sunlight. In the bay lay the ships of Potemkin’s growing Black Sea Fleet. On a signal from the pavilion, the ships thundered a salute to the two monarchs. To conclude, one of the new ships raised the emperor’s flag and fired a salute specifically for him.
Catherine led Joseph to a carriage and together they drove down to the port to tour the harbor and the city. They saw its new dockyards and wharves, its fortifications, admiralty buildings, magazines, barracks, churches, two hospitals, shops, houses, and schools. Joseph, who had been skeptical and critical of Kherson, was astonished by Sebastopol; it was, he declared, “the most beautiful port I have ever seen.” Impressed by the quality and readiness of the Russian ships, the emperor added, “The truth is that it is necessary to be here to believe what I see.”
From Sebastopol, Catherine had intended to escort her visitors through the Crimea as far as Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. But summer heat and Joseph’s desire to return to Vienna convinced her that everyone had seen enough. They returned to the Dnieper, riding together in her carriage, still talking politics and future plans. On June 2, they parted. Catherine continued north to Poltava, where Potemkin staged a re-creation of the 1709 Battle of Poltava, at which Peter the Great had annihilated Charles XII’s invading Swedish army. She watched as fifty thousand Russian soldiers, some costumed as Russians, some as Swedes, reenacted the battle.
On June 10 at Kharkov, Catherine and Potemkin parted. Before leaving, he presented her with a magnificent necklace of pearls, purchased and brought to him from Vienna. She bestowed on him the title of prince of Tauris. Afterward, traveling north through Kursk, Orel, and Tula, Catherine’s carriage bumped along roads no longer offering the smooth glide of a sledge on snow. When she reached Moscow on June 27, she was overjoyed to see her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, whose parents had permitted them to travel to welcome their grandmother. This was Catherine’s last visit to the old capital, and when she reached Tsarskoe Selo on July 11, she was exhausted.
She was immensly proud of Potemkin’s achievements. After leaving him at Kharkov, she had written him grateful, emotional letters during her journey: “I love you and your service which comes from pure zeal.… Please be careful.… With the intense heat you have at midday, I beg of you most humbly: do me the favor of looking after your health, for God’s and our sake, and be as pleased with me as I am with you.”
Potemkin replied with gratitude and a devotion that was almost filial:
Your Majesty! How I appreciate the feelings you expressed is known to God! You are more than a real mother to me.… What I owe you, what numerous distinctions you have given me, how far you have extended your favors on those close to me; but chief of all, the fact that malice and envy could not prejudice me in your eyes and all perfidy was devoid of success. That is what is really rare in this world; such firmness is given to you alone. This country will not forget its happiness.… Goodbye my benefactress and mother.… I am unto death your faithful slave.
Regarding the “malice and envy” of his enemies, she wrote back: “Between you and me, my friend, I will tell you the state of affairs in a few words: you serve me and I am grateful. And that’s all there is to it. With your zeal toward me and your fervor for the affairs of the empire, you rapped your enemies across the knuckles.”
Potemkin had built new cities and seaports, created new industries and a fleet, imported and planted new agriculture, and given Russia access to a new sea. One interested party did not believe that these cities and towns, or the shipyards and warships that Potemkin had shown to Catherine, were made of cardboard. The Turks were keenly aware of the strength of the new empire spreading along the north shore of the Black Sea. They did not wait to react. Catherine had returned to Tsarskoe Selo to rest, but she was to have little rest. Immediately following her return from the south came the news that Turkey had declared war.