Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Serenissimus Prince Grigory Potemkin in his prime when he was already Catherine the Great’s secret husband and increasingly her partner in power. Catherine called him her ‘marble beauty’ and he was said to have the most beautiful head of hair in Russia. Yet he was shy about his blind eye and was always painted from this angle to hide it.

Catherine the Great, dressed in Guardsman’s uniform, on 28th June 1762 – the day she seized power from her husband, Emperor Peter III. This was the occasion she met Potemkin for the first time. As she reviewed her troops outside the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, she noticed she was missing her sword-knot. Young Potemkin galloped up and offered her his own. She did not forget him.

Countess Alexandra ‘Sashenka’ Branicka, clever, lithe and formidable, was Potemkin’s niece, probably his mistress, but certainly his best friend after Catherine herself. He died in her arms.

The Heir – Grand Duke (later Emperor) Paul, Catherine’s unstable, embittered son who so hated Potemkin, he boasted he would toss him in jail.

Potemkin’s palaces: his northern and southern houses. The neo-Classical Taurida Palace in St Petersburg, the scene of the Prince’s sumptuous ball in 1791.

His first palace, the Anichkov in Petersburg

The Bablovo Palace in ruins near Tsarskoe Selo

The Ostrovki Castle. Both were inspired by Walpole’s Gothic Strawberry Hill.

The ‘Potemkin Palace’ in Ekaterinoslav

The Prince’s Palace in Turkish style in Nikolaev – he longed to visit this residence as he lay dying.

His huge palace in the centre of Kherson, his first city

The Empress aged 58 in her travelling costume during Potemkin’s magnificent 1787 tour of the Crimea where she met Emperor Joseph II.

Serenissimus at his apogee at the time of the Crimean trip and the start of the Russo-Turkish War: here in the uniform of Grand Admiral of the Black Sea Fleet with Catherine’s portrait, his proudest possession, set in diamonds on his chest.

Bottom: his signature.

The ageing Empress during the 1790s: still majestic and dignified but growing fat and breathless. As she told Potemkin, she was so in love with her talentless young lover, Zubov, that she felt like a fat fly in summer. She yearned for his approval of her last favourite…

Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky as the triumphant warlord on his last visit to Petersburg in 1791 when he was ebullient and volatile as ever. Catherine thought victory made him even more handsome. Even his enemies admitted ‘women crave the embraces of Prince Potemkin.’

The monuments by the roadside (in Moldova) where Potemkin died on 5th October 1791.

This board announced Potemkin’s death and listed all his titles during his lying-in-state in October 1791. The author found it in the Golia Monastery in Jassy (Romania) behind a piano.

His coffin in the tomb beneath the Church. The Bolsheviks stole the icons…

The trapdoor in St Catherine’s in Kherson (Ukraine) leading to Potemkin’s tomb.

The ruined church in Potemkin’s home village of Chizhova, near Smolensk in Russia where he was christened, learned to read, and where his heart is probably buried.

Potemkin aged around 35 at the height of his passionate love affair with Catherine, wearing the gold breastplates and uniform of the Captain of the elite Chevalier-Gardes, who stood watch over the Empress’s own apartments.

Daria Potemkina, the Prince’s mother who disapproved of his affairs with his nieces and told him so. He tossed her letters into the fire…

The Empress Elisabeth: statuesque, blue-eyed, blonde, shrewd and ruthless, a true daughter of Peter the Great with a taste for men, dresses, transvestite balls, and Orthodox piety. After being presented to her, young Potemkin lost interest in his studies…

The Grand Duchess Catherine with her gawky husband Peter and their son Paul. She loathed her husband – and Paul was probably her son by Serge Saltykov, her first lover.

Field-Marshal Peter Rumiantsev in command at the Battle of Kagul against the Turks in 1770. General Potemkin’s heroic exploits in this campaign made him a war hero.

The Orlov brothers who helped Catherine seize power. Good-natured Grigory (top) was her lover for twelve years. Brutal, scarfaced Alexei (bottom) helped murder Peter III and won the naval battle of Chesme against the Turks. Potemkin broke their influence.

A fanciful print of Catherine and Potemkin playing cards in her boudoir. In fact, they played usually in the Little Hermitage where the Empress made special rules for him – ‘Do not break or chew anything’ – because he liked to wander in, chewing a radish and wearing nothing but a dressing-gown and a pink bandanna.

Alexander Lanskoy, Catherine’s lover 1780–1784. He was gentle, affectionate and unambitious. She was happiest with him. When he died, Potemkin rushed to console her, and courtiers heard them howling together with grief.

Count Alexander Dmitriyev-Mamonov, Catherine’s penultimate favourite and kinsman of Potemkin. She nicknamed him ‘Redcoat’. He broke the Empress’s heart by falling in love with a lady-in-waiting. ‘Spit on him,’ said Potemkin.

Potemkin’s nieces were his family, friends and mistresses.

Princess Varvara Golitsyna – he fell in love with his flirtatious, strong-willed niece after the end of his affair with Catherine.

The Duchess of Kingston (also Countess of Bristol) made her name when she was still Elisabeth Chudleigh by appearing naked at the Venetian Ambassador’s Ball in London in 1749. By the time this ageing and slatternly self-publicist visited Petersburg in a luxurious yacht in the 1770s, she was the most scandalous woman in England, having been found guilty of bigamy. Potemkin, who fancied her art treasures, arranged for an adjutant to become her lover.

Countess Ekaterina Skavronskaya with her daughter, the future Princess Bagratian. Potemkin’s languid and beautiful niece – mistress, known as his ‘angel’, was his ‘sultana-in-chief’ for many years…

Princess Tatiana Yusupova, the youngest niece who adored her uncle and wrote that court was very dull without him

Countess Ekaterina Samoilova, the Prince’s brazen but fascinating niece-by-marriage. She seduced the young Comte de Damas during the Siege of Ochakov in 1788 – and was said to be Potemkin’s mistress soon afterwards.

The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II meets Catherine in a field near Kaidak during Potemkin’s Crimean progress in 1787. That night, Joseph grumbled about Potemkin’s cooking – yet he envied his vast achievements.

Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne, socialite, Austrian soldier, renowned wit, ‘jockey diplomatique’, and the charmer of Europe, said that it took the materials for a hundred men to make one Potemkin.

Potemkin’s ‘Matushka’ and ‘foster-nurse’. Catherine in the 1780s as she could be seen around the park at Tsarskoe Selo, in a bonnet and walking shoes with her beloved English greyhounds.

Potemkin, in the helmet in the centre, leads the storming of the powerful Turkish fortress of Ochakov in 1788. The Turkish dead were so numerous, they were piled into pyramids on the ice where they froze solid.

Count Alexander Suvorov, Russia’s most brilliant general. Tough, cultured and wildly eccentric, he used to perform naked somersaults in front of his army every morning. ‘You can’t over-Suvorov Suvorov,’ said Potemkin.

The invitation to Potemkin’s famous ball in the Taurida Palace on 28th April 1791. Catherine and Potemkin wept as he knelt at her feet to say goodbye.

Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, Potemkin’s mistress near the end of his life. She was a paragon of aristocratic beauty with whom the Prince fell passionately in love, shocking observers by stroking her in public, building her an underground palace, ordering artillery salvoes to mark their caresses, and serving diamonds instead of pudding at her birthday ball.

Countess Sophia Potocka, the ‘Beautiful Greek’ and outstanding adventuress of the age, said to be the ‘prettiest girl in Europe.’ She was a spy and courtesan notorious for her ‘beauty, vice and crimes’ who was sold at the age of 14 by her mother, a fruit-seller in Constantinople, and became one of Potemkin’s last mistresses before marrying the fabulously wealthy Polish Count Felix Potocki, seducing her step-son and building a huge fortune.

Prince Platon Zubov, Catherine the Great’s last favourite who was vain, silly and politically inept. She nicknamed him ‘Blackie’. Potemkin failed to remove him but, as Zubov admitted, Serenissimus remained Catherine’s ‘exacting husband.’

‘Potemkin’s death was as extraordinary as his life.’ On 5th October 1791 Potemkin, weeping for the Empress, died on the Bessarabian steppes beside the road, in the arms of his favourite niece, Countess Branicka. Branicka fell into a faint. A Cossack commented, ‘Lived on gold; died on grass.’

Potemkin’s funeral in Jassy was magnificent – but the destiny of his body was as restless as his life.