THE FAVOURITES LANSKOI AND IERMOLOV
[1785 A.D.]
At the time when a high-flown sentimentality was the fashion in Germany, and the empress was past fifty, she indulged in a fit of romantic love for the insipid and spiritless Lanskoi. This turn in her affections was very agreeable to Potemkin, for Lanskoi neither took up the cause of the destitute khan, nor yielded to the allurements of the king of Prussia, the emperor Joseph II, or the English, when they were desirous of engaging him in affairs of state. Potemkin freely permitted the empress to indulge her visionary love for the wonderfully handsome and youthful face which captivated her affections, and did not grudge her, among the many gross and degrading scenes of her life, the enjoyment of one romantic passion, after the manner of Werther and Siegwart, from the year 1780 till July, 1784. Catherine’s love for Lanskoi had been romantic in his life, and her sorrow at his death was not less extravagant; but notwithstanding all this ideality, she had been also careful to show him substantial proofs of her affection at the cost of the country. She bestowed upon him not only all possible titles, orders, and decorations—diamonds, plate, and collections of every kind, but he left behind him in cash a property of 7,000,000 rubles.
The fantastic mourning for Lanskoi was no sooner evaporated than the empress allowed Potemkin, who presented candidates for every office, to supply her with a substitute for her departed lover. In order to exclude all other pretenders, Potemkin on every such occasion was prepared to fill the vacancy; and with this view he had for some time made Lieutenant Iermolov one of his adjutants. In 1785 this man became the declared favourite of the empress, and soon ventured to pursue a course which Lanskoi would never have thought of. He directed Catherine’s attention to the tyranny of Potemkin, and gave her some hints respecting his behaviour towards Sahim Gerai. The empress expressed her displeasure without naming the person who had made her acquainted with the unhappy fate of the khan; Potemkin, however easily guessed that no man in the empire would dare to speak ill of him to the empress except Iermolov. He therefore threateningly replied, “That must have been said by the White Moor,” as he was accustomed to call Iermolov on account of his fair countenance and flat nose.
Catherine did not hesitate severely to reproach Potemkin for his harsh and unjust conduct towards the khan, and she even wavered for some months between her favourite and this son of the Titans, whom she regarded as her protector and the creator of her glory and her greatness. At the end of June, 1786, a fresh scene occurred, by which the empress was compelled to declare either for the one or the other. Iermolov had made a new attempt to alienate the empress from Potemkin; the latter, therefore, haughtily insisted that either Iermolov or he must retire from her service; Catherine felt herself constrained to adhere to Potemkin, and Iermolov went upon his travels. During the course of the year he had been loaded with riches, and on his departure he was furnished with 100,000 rubles and imperial recommendations to the Russian ambassadors at all the European courts. On the day after his departure Momonov, another adjutant of Potemkin, occupied his place.
JOSEPH II VISITS CATHERINE; A SPECTACULAR TOUR
[1787 A.D.]
About this period Potemkin repeatedly travelled from St. Petersburg to Tauris and back with all the expedition of a courier, whilst he was engaged in the building of Kherson, in order to prepare a splendid triumph for the empress. The neglected Sahim Gerai hastened thither to meet him and make him acquainted with the urgency of his wants; but Potemkin, instead of rendering him any assistance, banished him to Kaluga, where he fell into a state of the deepest poverty. He then conceived that he might find some relief from his fellow believers, and fled to Turkey, but the sultan caused him to be arrested as a traitor and renegade at Khotin, to be conveyed to Rhodes, and there despatched by the bow-string (1787). The plan contemplated by Potemkin and the empress was to raise the grand duke Constantine, second grandson of the empress, to the dignity of emperor of Byzantium, at the expense of the Turks, and at the same time to incorporate the kingdom of Poland with Russia. The new city of Kherson was no sooner ready for this grand theatrical representation than the empress was to travel thither to receive the homage of her new subjects, and to deceive the world by an ostentatious display of magnificence and pomp.
Joseph II was invited to meet the empress in Kherson, in order to consult with her upon a partition of the Turkish Empire; but Constantine himself was in the first instance left at home. The luxury and extravagance exhibited by Potemkin during the empress’ journey and the fêtes prepared for her reception and entertainment at Kherson were worthy of the heaven-storming characters of the pair. They remind us of the extravagance of the Abassides and the descendants of Timur, with this difference—that civilisation and the arts were strangers to the people of the caliphs and of the Great Mogul. Never perhaps was there seen in monarchical Europe, where such things are not rare, such a gross abuse of the wealth and well-being of the people, and such insult cast on public opinion by a contemptible comedy, as on the occasion of this imperial progress.
It began in January, 1787, and was continued night and day. To facilitate the journey by night, Potemkin had caused great piles of wood to be erected at every fifty perches, which were kindled at nightfall, and imparted to the whole district almost the brightness of day. On the sixth day the cortège reached Smolensk, and fourteen days afterwards Kiev, where the degraded Polish magnates, who made a trade of their nation, their honour, and their friendship, were assembled to offer their homage to the empress and join in the revelry of her court. Potemkin himself had gone forward in advance in order to arrange the side-scenes of the theatre which he erected from St. Petersburg to Kherson. Deserts were peopled for the occasion; and palaces were raised in the trackless wild. The nakedness of the plains was disguised by villages built for the purpose of a day, and enlivened by fireworks. Chains of mountains were illuminated. Fine roads were opened by the army. Howling wildernesses were transformed into blooming gardens; and immense flocks and herds were driven to the sides of the road in order to delight the eyes of the empress in her hasty transit. The rocks in the Dnieper were sprung, that the empress might descend the stream as conveniently as she had travelled thither in the chamber of her sledge. At the beginning of May the whole party embarked on the river in fifteen splendid galleys at Krementshuk, and on the following day Stanislaus of Poland presented himself at Kaniev, in order, as it were, by his insipid and pitiful character to serve as a foil to the monarchial splendour of a woman. He accepted an alms of 100,000 rubles for the expenses of his journey, was very graciously received by Potemkin, treated with coldness and indifference by the empress, and as if his royal Polish income was simply a Russian pension he begged for an augmentation. He was not ashamed to acknowledge to all the courts whose ambassadors accompanied the empress that he regarded his kingdom as a Russian province, for he besought the empress to grant the succession to his nephew and to his nation the free navigation of the Dnieper. As is customary in such cases, there was no lack of promises; but none of his petitions were really granted, for it was impossible either to value or respect him, and in his situation he was incapable of inspiring fear.