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would have been entirely lost had the two Russian admirals been
qualified for such a command. Captain Pélissier, who had served in
Holland, is said to have given Admiral Tchitchakov advice which he
ought to have followed, had he not been too obstinately attached to
his own opinions; Pélissier even pointed out to generals Suchtelen
and Soltikov the places where they ought to have erected their
batteries in order effectually to bar the egress of the Swedish fleet
from the bay; no attention, however, was paid to his advice. The
prince of Nassau-Siegen proved himself to be in no respect superior
as a commander to Tchitchakov. On the other hand, if the advice of
Duke Charles had been adopted, the Russians would have been
victorious without a battle; King Gustavus and Stedingk, however,
rescued the honour of the Swedish name.
The Swedes had now been closely shut up in the bay of Viborg for
three weeks, and at the end of June were reduced to extremities; in
the beginning of July a grand council of war was held. Duke Charles
and many other members of the council recommended a
capitulation, but the king and Stedingk were in favour of making a
desperate effort to force their way through the enemy’s line. The
attempt was accordingly made on the 3rd of July, and through
Tchitchakov’s neglect it was so far successful, as it enabled the
Swedish fleet to bring the blockading squadron to an engagement.
But the Swedes lost in it not only seven ships of the line, three
frigates, and more than thirty galleys and gunboats, but almost the
whole of the royal guards, the queen’s regiment, and that of Upland,
amounting to six thousand or seven thousand men, which had been
put on board the fleet. Whilst the larger Swedish ships thus
endeavoured to gain the open sea, the flotilla had withdrawn for
safety into an arm of the gulf, which runs parallel to the shore and
stretches towards Friedrichsham. This inlet, called the sound of
Suenske, is extremely difficult of access on the side towards
Friedrichsham, in consequence of a group of rocky islands at its
mouth, but it may be safely reached through the open harbour of
Asph. By this way the prince of Nassau-Siegen determined to pass
into the sound with the Russian flotilla, and attack the Swedes in
their place of refuge.
 The latter were well protected from the attack of the Russian fleet
by rocks, and when the prince gave orders for the assault, on the
9th, the sailors were so exhausted and his orders for battle were so
unskilful that the king of Sweden gained a splendid victory on that
and the following day. The loss of the Russians was so great as to
have surpassed any which they had suffered since the Seven Years’
War. Fifty-five vessels were captured, a number of others destroyed,
and fourteen thousand Russians either taken prisoners or slain. In
spite of this signal victory, the king of Sweden now awoke from his
dream of humbling the pride and glory of Russia; already he began
to cast his eyes towards France, and in the following year he
dreamed his monarchical dream in favour of the French émigrés.
The idea of becoming the Godefroy de Bouillon of the aristocratic
and monarchical crusade, which Burke at that time proclaimed in the
English parliament and in his work on the French Revolution, had
been awakened in his mind in 1790, and the empress of Russia
found means of confirming him in his visionary projects. Moreover
his means were exhausted, and he therefore lent a favourable ear to
the proposal of Galvez, the Spanish ambassador, who began to
mediate for a peace between Sweden and Russia.
This peace, concluded at Varela on the Kimmene on the 14th of
August, 1790, served to show how empty all Gustavus’ splendour
was, and how unreal and inefficient were all the efforts he had made.
It was now seen that all the blood had been shed to no purpose, and
all the treasures of his very poor kingdom mischievously
squandered, for everything remained on the footing on which it had
been in the spring of 1788.

PROGRESS OF THE AUSTRO-RUSSIAN WAR WITH TURKEY

We now return to the war in which Austria and Russia were jointly
engaged against Turkey. The whole Austrian army was ready to take
the field at the end of the year 1787: it formed an immense cordon
stretching from the mountains on the coast of the Adriatic Sea to the
Carpathians, and consisted of a main body and five divisions.
Unhappily, the emperor Joseph was desirous of commanding the
main army in person, under the unskilful direction of Lacy, his military
Mentor, who, like his pupil Mack, was a good drill-sergeant, but no
general. The main body consisted of 25,000 infantry and 22,000
horse, and the whole of the troops together amounted to 86,000
cavalry and 245,000 foot, accompanied by 898 pieces of artillery.
In February, 1788, Russia and Austria had simultaneously
declared war against the Turks; but in August of that year England
and Prussia entered into an alliance, the main object of which was to
place Prussia in a situation to prevent the aggrandisement of Austria,
if necessary, by force of arms. This, however, was superfluous in
1788, because the diversion effected by the king of Sweden
prevented the Russians from proceeding with their usual rapidity,
and the emperor Joseph by his presence with the army frustrated the
effect of his immense armaments. The dissatisfaction with the whole
conduct of the war became so general that Joseph was at length
obliged earnestly to entreat Laudon, who had been the popular hero
of the Austrians since the time of the Seven Years’ War, and whom
the emperor had hitherto neither employed nor consulted, to assume
the command of the army in Croatia.

Successes of Laudon (1788 A.D.)

Laudon, having made an express stipulation that the emperor was

not to interfere with his plans marched against the Turks, defeated
them under the walls of Dubitza the very day after he joined the
army, and reduced that fortress; then, pushing into the heart of
Bosnia, he compelled Novi to surrender, whilst the emperor himself
was obliged to hasten to the aid of the army in the Bannat, which
was very hard pressed by the Turks. The division under
Wartensleben, which should have supported it, had been driven
back by the Turks, who succeeded, in consequence of an
incomprehensible neglect on the part of the Austrians, in getting
complete possession of the rocky bed through which the Danube
has forced a passage at a distance of six-and-twenty miles above
New Orsova. The pass, which is not more than a pistol-shot in width,
is commanded by a fortified cleft in the rock, called Veterani’s Hole,
and this post the Austrians should and could have maintained when
the main body of the Turks appeared at Old Orsova on the 7th of
August; this, however, they neglected to do. The Austrian general
suffered himself to be defeated and lost thirteen pieces of cannon,
and as his communications with the main army were cut off, he was
obliged to retreat so far that the garrison of this important post was
left to its fate. The Turks sacrificed great numbers of men in order to
seize this fastness, by the possession of which they immediately
became masters of the whole navigation of the Danube as far down
as Belgrade. As soon as the Danube was lost, the imperial army
found itself threatened in the rear.
Nothing but disaster attended the operations of Joseph and
Wartensleben. The army under the prince of Coburg was somewhat
less unfortunate. Khotin, which the Russians had captured in the last
war without firing a shot, was reduced by it after a most heroic
resistance of three months; and this was the last exploit of a
campaign in which thirty thousand Austrians fell in desultory
skirmishes, and forty thousand were swept off by pestilence—losses
but poorly compensated by the capture of Szabatch, Khotin, Dubitza,
and Novi. Circumstances, however, afterwards proved more
favourable. Jassy was taken; in October, the Russians were in
possession of five districts of Moldavia and of several passes in
Wallachia, and the main army was again able to extend the limits of
its operations. Wartensleben sat down with a part of the army before
Mahadia; and the emperor kept possession of the country from
Pantchova to Semlin.

Victories of Suvarov (1788-1789 A.D.)

After the massacre perpetrated by Suvarov upon the Turks on the

promontory of Kinburn, the Russians had remained for a long time
quiet; but by their possession of the coasts they effectually
prevented the Turks from landing any troops, and by the capture of
the island of Beresam wholly excluded them from the mouth of the
Dnieper. It was not till late in the year 1788 that Potemkin summoned
Suvarov from Kinburn to conduct the siege of Otchakov, where,
however, he was wounded, and after his return to Kinburn the siege
made very little progress. The avarice of Potemkin deprived the
soldiers of the necessary supplies; and the dreadful cold and
disease proved far more injurious to them than the attacks of their
enemies.
At length the frost became so intense that the men were obliged to
excavate pits for dwellings, but the same frost also opened up a
means of attacking the fortress and reducing it after the Russian
fashion, that is, without regard to the sacrifice of thousands of men, a
few weeks earlier than they could otherwise have done. The city is
completely protected on the side towards the Black Sea by a marshy
lake called Liman; and now that the lake was frozen, Potemkin
issued orders to storm the fortress from the sea side, where it was
weakest. The Russians were cruelly sacrificed: one regiment was no
sooner mowed down than another was compelled to advance, and
above four thousand men were slain before the storming of
Otchakov was effected (December 16th), an exploit which was
afterwards extolled to heaven. The Russians, having at length borne
down all resistance and forced their way into the city, were
compensated for their losses and sufferings during the siege by
three days’ murder and pillage; they put citizens and soldiers, men,
women, and children to the sword without mercy or distinction. It is
said that twenty thousand Turks perished in this massacre; but this
piece of Russian heroism, which was not performed by Potemkin
himself but by others at his command, was also rewarded after the
Russian fashion. Every soldier who had taken part in the siege
received a medal of honour, whilst Potemkin, who had contributed
nothing to its success, derived the only real advantage. The empress
had previously deprived Razumovski of the office of hetman, which
she now conferred upon Potemkin, who received in addition a
present of 100,000 rubles, besides what he had appropriated to
himself out of the moneys destined for the besieging army, and what
he had seized out of the rich booty which fell into his hands after the
capture of the city.
The death of the sultan Abd-el-Habed in April, 1789, made no
change in the relations between the Turks and Russians. His
successor, Selim, continued to prosecute the war, and Suvarov
having recovered from the effects of his wound again joined
Potemkin’s army, and was put at the head of the division which was
to co-operate with the Austrians. Laudon had now the command of
the whole Austrian army; the prince of Coburg, however, retained
that of the division which was to keep open the communications with
the Russians; and again he gave such numerous proofs of his
incapacity to conduct any great undertakings, or even to help himself
out of trifling difficulties, that the history of the campaign of 1789
alone ought to have prevented the emperor Leopold from entrusting
him with the command against the French, who possessed generals
and soldiers of a very different kind from those of the Turks. Selim III
had succeeded in getting on foot a very considerable force which
was destined to operate on the extreme point of Moldavia, where
that country touches upon Transylvania, and is separated from
Wallachia by a small river, which also divides the little town of
Fokshani into two parts, one belonging to Moldavia, and the other to
Wallachia. Coburg was advancing thither slowly and methodically,
when the Turkish army encamped in the neighbourhood of the town
turned suddenly upon him, and filled him with such apprehensions of
being completely shut in that, instead of boldly doing what Suvarov
afterwards did, he anxiously besought that general’s speedy
assistance.
Suvarov’s army was lying at Belat in Moldavia; when the news
reached him he at once began a march of between forty and fifty
miles in a direct line over mountains, across ravines and pathless
wilds, and in less than thirty-six hours reached the Austrians on the
30th of July, at five o’clock in the evening. At eleven that night he
sent the plan of the attack upon the Turks, which was to commence
at two in the morning, to the astonished prince, who had never heard
of such rapidity of movement, or seen it equalled even on parade.
The bewildered prince went three times to Suvarov’s quarters
without having seen him; in the battle he made no claim to the
supreme command, which should have belonged to him as the
eldest general, but submitted as a subordinate to Suvarov’s orders.
The Turks, to the number of between fifty and sixty thousand men,
were in position at Fokshani when the Russians and Austrians with
forty thousand men passed the river Purna and stormed their fortified
camp, mounting the ramparts and driving them in at the point of the
bayonet, as if they were assaulting ordinary field-works. The camp
was taken in an hour, with the loss of about eight hundred men; the
whole body of the Turkish infantry fell into disorder, their cavalry
galloped off, were scattered in all directions, and pursued for some
miles with the greatest impetuosity and vehement zeal. The whole of
the baggage and artillery, all the stores collected in Fokshani, a
hundred standards and seventy pieces of cannon, fell into the hands
of the victors; the Austrians exhibited the same zeal, perseverance,
and courage as the Russians, and had they possessed such a
commander as Suvarov, they would have reaped immense fruits
from the victory, but they became sensible, as early as August, that
they were in want of a proper leader.
Suvarov returned to Moldavia; Coburg looked quietly on whilst the
Turks were collecting a new army, and suffered the grand vizir to
advance without obstruction in Wallachia. The Turks directed
Hassan Pasha, who lay in Ismail, to make an expedition against
Repnin, whilst the grand vizir was to march against Prince Coburg,
who had taken up a position at Martinesti, on the river Rimnik. The
news of this fresh attack no sooner reached the Austrian camp than
Coburg, instead of attempting to help himself, again had recourse to
Suvarov, who had already drawn nearer to Coburg from Belat. The
grand vizir’s army, which had been estimated at one hundred
thousand men, pushed forward rapidly by Braila (Ibrahil), and
compelled the advanced posts of the prince to retire into their camp.
Suvarov received the prince’s letter on the 16th of September,
immediately gave orders to march, and two days afterwards
succeeded in forming a junction with the Austrians, at the very
moment in which they were to have been attacked by the Turks.

Austrian and Russian Valour; Austria’s Withdrawal (1789-1790 A.D.)

The Austrians then proved anew that they were not to be

surpassed when not commanded as usual by princes and privileged
persons, who become generals whilst they sleep. Coburg, as he had
previously done at Fokshani, totally relinquished the command at
Martinesti to Suvarov, who immediately availed himself of the
oversight of the Turks in not fortifying their camp before they offered
battle, and attacked them by storm in their unfinished trenches. The
issue was as glorious as it had been on the 31st of July at Fokshani;
the contest, however, was more obstinately maintained. On this
occasion the Russians formed the left wing, whilst the centre and
right were occupied by the Austrians, whose admirably served
artillery scattered the Turkish cavalry, which had made an attempt to
surround and cut off the small body of the Russians. The victory in
this dangerous and hard-fought battle was gained not merely by the
courage, activity, and bayonets of the Austrian and Russian infantry,
but especially by the great military skill of the commander. His orders
to avoid the village of Bochsa, and first to drive the Turks out of the
woods by which they were covered before commencing the main
attack, have been greatly admired, and above all his prudence in not
sacrificing the infantry in a blind storm, which was the more
remarkable in a general accustomed to bring everything to a rapid
determination.
The victory was splendid, the booty immense, the Turkish army a
second time utterly dispersed—a necessary consequence of the
nature of its composition—and the number of killed and wounded
much greater than at Fokshani. Prince Coburg, on account of this
victory, in which he was entitled to little share, was created a field-
marshal; Suvarov received the dignity of a count of the empire from
the emperor Joseph, and the empress of Russia for once gave an
honourable surname to a man who had really earned it by his
personal services; she raised him to a level with her Tchesmian
Orlov and her Taurian Potemkin, and called him Rimnikski, from the
name of the river on the banks of which he had been victorious.
The victory of Rimnik and the capture of Belgrade by Laudon on
the 9th of October were the harbingers of greater success. Hassan
Pasha, the Turkish high-admiral and celebrated conqueror of Egypt,
whose confidence in his good fortune had encouraged him to
assume the command of an army, was totally defeated at Tobak, in
Bessarabia, by Prince Potemkin, and his discomfiture was followed
by the surrender of Bender, Akerman, Kilia Nova, and Isatza, and by
the investment of Ismail. At the same time the prince of Coburg took
Bucharest and Hohenlohe, forcing the passes which lead into
Wallachia, made himself master of Rimnik and Krajova. Laudon also
reduced Semendria and Kladova, and blockaded Orsova, which,
being situated in an island of the Danube, was inaccessible to
regular attacks. By these conquests the allies became masters of the
whole line of fortresses which covered the Turkish frontier; the three
grand armies, originally separated by a vast extent of country, were
rapidly converging to the same point, and threatened, by their united
force, to overbear all opposition, and in another campaign to
complete the subversion of the Ottoman empire in Europe.
 AUSTRIANS ENTERING BELGRADE

(From the painting by Karl von Blaas in the Ruhmeshalle of

the Arsenal in Vienna)

But in the midst of this successful career, the increasing ferment in

the hereditary states of Austria, the rebellion in the Netherlands, and,
still more, the interposition of the maritime powers and Prussia,
checked the hopes of Joseph at the very moment when his projects
of aggrandisement seemed hastening to their completion. Justly
alarmed at the successes of the two imperial courts, the three
combined powers incited Poland to throw off the yoke of Russia,
delivered the king of Sweden from Danish invasion, and laid the
foundation of a general alliance for reducing the overgrown power of
Austria and Russia. The king of Prussia even encouraged the rising
discontents in Hungary, fomented the troubles which the impolitic
innovations of Joseph had excited in the Netherlands, and, in the
beginning of 1790, opened a negotiation with the Porte for the
conclusion of an offensive alliance, intended not only to effect the
restoration of the dominions conquered during the existing war, but
even of the Crimea, and the territories dismembered by the two
imperial courts from Poland.
The only power to which Joseph might have turned as a
counterpoise to this combination was France, from whose recent
change of system he had flattered himself with hopes of a cordial
support, and from which he had even received private largesses to a
considerable amount. But now France was in the throes of her great
revolution, and Joseph was left without a resource. Worn down by
innumerable calamities and disease, he died in February, 1790; and
his successor, Leopold, was fortunate enough to conclude a
separate peace with the Porte.

Russia Prosecutes the War; the Storm of Ismail (1790 A.D.)

Russia continued to prosecute the war against the Turks without

the aid of Austria. Ismail still held out, and Potemkin, who had been
besieging it for seven months, began to grow impatient. Living in his
camp like one of those satraps whom he even surpassed in luxury,
he was surrounded by a crowd of courtiers and ladies, who exerted
every effort to amuse him. One of these ladies, pretending to read
the decrees of fate in the arrangement of a pack of cards, predicted
that he would take the town at the end of three weeks. Potemkin
answered, with a smile, that he had a method of divination far more
infallible. He instantly sent orders to Suvarov to come from Galatz
and take Ismail in three days. Suvarov arrived and took such
measures as would seem to indicate that he designed a renewal of
the regular siege; he drew together the scattered divisions of the
troops, formed them into a large besieging army of about forty
thousand men, and ordered the small Russian fleet to come into the
neighbourhood of the city; but his real design was to follow the
course he had successfully pursued before Otchakov, take
advantage of the frost, and reduce the fortress by storm.
Had not Ismail, according to ancient usage, been built without
advanced works, even a general like Suvarov would scarcely have
ventured on such an attack, which in the actual condition of the
defences was attended by such murderous consequences. On the
21st of September the city was twice summoned, and on both
occasions the garrison and inhabitants were threatened with the fate
of Otchakov. The Turks, however, did not suffer themselves to be
terrified into submission, and the fearful storm was commenced on
the 22nd, at four o’clock in the morning. The wall was not mounted
till eight o’clock, after an unexampled slaughter; but still the hottest
part of the struggle took place in the city itself. Every street was
converted into a fortress, every house became a redoubt, and it was
twelve o’clock before the Russians, advancing through scenes of
carnage and desperate resistance, reached the market-place, where
the Tatars of the Crimea were collected. The Tatars fought for two
hours with all the energy of despair, and after they had been all cut
to pieces the struggle was still carried on by the Turks in the streets.
Suvarov at length opened a passage for his cavalry through the
gates into the devoted city; they charged through the streets, and
continued to cut down and massacre the people till four o’clock in the
afternoon. At the conclusion of this dreadful butchery the Russians
received the reward which had been promised them when they were
led to the storm and to certain death,—the city was given up for
three days to the mercy of the victorious troops.
Suvarov himself, in his official report of this
[1791 a.d.] murderous enterprise, states that in the course
of four days 33,000 Turks were either slain or
mortally wounded, and 10,000 taken prisoners. He rates the loss of
the Russians at 2000 killed and 2500 wounded: a number which
seems to us as improbably small as the usual accounts, which
assign 15,000 as the Russian loss, seem exaggerated. There were
two French émigrés present at this storm, one of whom afterwards
became celebrated as a Russian governor-general and French
minister, and the other as a Russian general in the war against his
countrymen. The first was the duke de Richelieu, or as he was then
called de Fronsac, and the second the count de Langeron. Kutusov
also served in this affair under Suvarov and led the sixth line of
attack.

European Intervention; the Treaty of Jassy (1792 A.D.)

About this time the whole diplomacy and aristocracy of Europe

were busily employed in endeavouring to rescue the Turks, in order
to check the dangerously rapid progress of the French and Polish
revolutionists. There speedily grew up such a general desire as the
English wished to promote—of two evils to choose the least—to
secure and uphold the empire of the Turks and to let the nationality
of Poland perish. Russia, however, declined the proffered mediation
of England in the war with the Turks, as she had resolved for this
time to give up her conquests in Turkey in order to indemnify herself
in Poland: she accepted merely the intervention of the friendly
Danes.
Potemkin and the empress were not unthankful for Suvarov’s
servility, since he threw himself and all his services at their feet, and
ascribed everything to them alone. Repnin, whom Potemkin left at
the head of the army when he went to St. Petersburg in October,
1790, pursued a very different course, doing more in two months
than Potemkin had done in three years. He crossed the Danube with
his army, pushed forward into Bulgaria, and caused the whole
Turkish army to be attacked and beaten near Badadagh by Kutusov,
after Gudovitch, the brother of him who had been the faithful aide-
de-camp of Peter III, had completely put down the Tatars in the
Kuban in January, 1791. At the head of forty thousand Russians,
Repnin then advanced against one hundred thousand Turks, under
the command of the same vizir, Yussuf, who had fought with such
success against the emperor Joseph in the Bannat.
Potemkin eager to appropriate the impending victory, started with
great expeditiousness from St. Petersburg when both armies were
ready for battle (July, 1791). He took it for granted that Repnin would
certainly await his arrival at the army; but he did no such thing. He
offered battle before the arrival of Potemkin, whose custom it was to
enjoy the fruits in the gathering of which he had no share. The
victory which Repnin gained over the great Turkish army in July at
Matchin led to a violent altercation between him and Potemkin, who
came too late to have any participation in the honours of the day;
Repnin, however, still remained in command of the army. Potemkin
afterwards did everything in his power to prevent the peace for which
Repnin was to negotiate, although he clearly saw that the course of
events required the Russians to give up this wholesale conquest of
Turkish provinces. Happily, his death left Repnin’s hands free, and a
treaty was concluded at Jassy on the 9th of January, 1792, between
Russia and the Porte, by which the former acquired nothing more
than the fortress of Otchakov, the surrounding territory from the
Dniester to the Bug, and the protectorate of Georgia.

THE DEATH OF POTEMKIN (1792 A.D.); SÉGUR’S

CHARACTERISATION
 Not long after Potemkin’s arrival at Jassy,
[1792 a.d.] where his headquarters or, to speak more
properly, his capital and his court were
established, he was seized with a malignant fever, and presumed to
treat it with the same haughty contempt with which he had long been
used to treat his fellow men: he laughed at his physicians, and ate
salt meat and raw turnips. His disease growing worse, he desired to
be conveyed to Otchakov, his beloved conquest, but had not
travelled more than a few miles before the air of his carriage seemed
to stifle him. His cloak was spread by the road-side; he was laid on it,
and there expired in the arms of his favourite niece Branicka.
Catherine fainted three times when she heard of his death: it was
necessary to bleed her; she was thought to be dying. She expressed
almost as much grief as at the death of Lanskoi; but it was not the
lover she regretted: it was the friend whose genius assimilated with
her own, whom she considered as the support of her throne and the
executor of her vast projects. Catherine, holding her usurped
sceptre, was a woman and timid: she was accustomed to behold in
Potemkin a protector whose fortune and glory were intimately
connected with her own. The character of this Russian vizir has been
thus sketched by Count Ségur, who, as ambassador to St.
Petersburg, lived long in habits of intimacy with him:
“Prince Gregory Alexandrovitch Potemkin was one of the most
extraordinary men of his times; but in order to have played so
conspicuous a part, he must have been born in Russia and have
lived in the reign of Catherine II. In any other country, in any other
time, with any sovereign, he would have been misplaced; and it was
a singular stroke of chance that created this man for the period that
tallied with him, and brought together and combined all the
circumstances with which he could tally.
“In his person were collected the most opposite defects and
advantages of every kind. He was avaricious and ostentatious,
despotic and popular, inflexible and beneficent, haughty and
obliging, politic and confiding, licentious and superstitious, bold and
timid, ambitious and indiscreet. Lavish of his bounties to his
relations, his mistresses, and his favourites, yet frequently paying
neither his household nor his creditors. His consequence always
depended on a woman, and he was always unfaithful to her. Nothing
could equal the activity of his mind or the indolence of his body. No
dangers could appal his courage; no difficulties force him to abandon
his projects. But the success of an enterprise always brought with it
disgust. He wearied the empire by the number of his posts and the
extent of his power. He was himself fatigued with the burden of his
existence; envious of all that he did not do, and sick of all that he did.
Rest was not grateful to him, nor occupation pleasing. Everything
with him was desultory—business, pleasure, temper, carriage. In
every company he had an embarrassed air, and his presence was a
restraint on every company. He was morose to all that stood in awe
of him, and caressed all such as accosted him with familiarity.
“Ever promising, seldom keeping his word, and never forgetting
anything, none had read less than he—few people were better
informed. He had talked with the skilful in all professions, in all the
sciences, in every art. None better knew how to draw forth and
appropriate to himself the knowledge of others. In conversation he
would have astonished a scholar, an artist, an artisan, or a divine.
His information was not deep, but it was very extensive. He never
dived into a subject, but he spoke well on all subjects.
“The inequality of his temper was productive of an inconceivable
oddity in his desires, his conduct, and his manner of life. One while
he formed the project of becoming duke of Courland; at another he
thought of bestowing on himself the crown of Poland. He frequently
gave intimations of an intention to make himself a bishop or even a
simple monk. He built a superb palace, and wanted to sell it before it
was finished. One day he would dream of nothing but war; and only
officers, Tatars, and Cossacks were admitted to him: the next day he
was busied only with politics; he would partition the Ottoman Empire,
and put in agitation all the cabinets of Europe. At other times, with
nothing in his head but the court, dressed in a magnificent suit,
covered with ribbons presented to him by every potentate, displaying
diamonds of extraordinary magnitude and brilliance, he was giving
superb entertainments without any cause.
 “He was sometimes known for a month, and in the face of all the
town, to pass whole evenings at the apartments of a young woman,
seeming to have alike forgotten all business and all decorum.
Sometimes also, for several weeks successively, shut up in his room
with his nieces and several men whom he honoured with his
intimacy, he would lounge on a sofa, without speaking, playing at
chess, or at cards, with his legs bare, his shirt collar unbuttoned, in a
morning gown, with a thoughtful front, his eyebrows knit, and
presenting to the view of strangers, who came to see him, the figure
of a rough and squalid Cossack. These singularities often put the
empress out of humour, but rendered him more interesting to her. In
his youth he had pleased her by the ardour of his passion, his valour,
and his masculine beauty. Being arrived at maturity, he charmed her
still by flattering her pride, calming her apprehensions, confirming
her power, and caressing her fancies of oriental empire, the
expulsion of the barbarians, and the restoration of the Grecian
republics.
“Potemkin began everything, completed nothing, disordered the
finances, disorganised the army, depopulated his country, and
enriched it with other deserts. The fame of the empress was
increased by his conquests. The admiration they excited was for her;
and the hatred they raised, for her minister. Posterity, more
equitable, will perhaps divide between them both the glory of the
successes and the severity of the reproaches. It will not bestow on
Potemkin the title of a great man; but it will mention him as an
extraordinary person; and, to draw his picture with accuracy, he
might be represented as the real emblem, as the living image of the
Russian Empire. For, in fact, he was colossal like Russia. In his
mind, as in that country, were cultivated districts and desert plains. It
also partook of the Asiatic, the European, the Tatar, and the
Cossack; the rudeness of the eleventh century, and the corruption of
the eighteenth; the surface of the arts, and the ignorance of the
cloisters; an outside of civilisation, and many traces of barbarism.”j

THE QUESTION OF THE IMPERIAL SUCCESSION

 Some time before the death of Potemkin, Catherine had begun
proceedings intended to bar the czarevitch Paul from the imperial
succession.a She was by no means the cruel, heartless mother that
many writers are inclined to represent; but she knew her son
thoroughly well, and foreseeing how destructive of all good his reign
would be she could not think without fear of how the empire, which
under her rule had made such rapid strides in the path of prosperity,
glory, and civilisation, would after her remain without any guarantee
for the stability and durability of its existence. With the intention of
preserving the country from such a misfortune, Catherine wished to
make over the throne to the grand duke Alexander Pavlovitch and
therefore the setting aside of the czarevitch appeared in her eyes a
state necessity. Meanwhile it is sufficiently well known that Catherine
had long been accustomed to place the interests of the state above
everything and to sacrifice to them all other considerations and
feelings; therefore the difficulties with which so daring an
administrative step was doubtless accompanied could not stop the
creator of the changes of the year 1762. “Obstacles are created in
this world,” Catherine once wrote, “in order that persons of merit may
set them aside and thus add to their reputation; that is the meaning
of obstacles.” Circumstances were also favourable to this new
change contemplated by Catherine, for at that time no law existed
that exactly established the order of succession to the throne. The
statute of Peter the Great of the year 1722 was still maintained in full
power, and by this statute the reigning Russian sovereigns had the
right of naming anyone they liked as their successors to the throne
according to their own judgment, without being restrained by any
ancient right of primogeniture; and in cases where the heir already
designated showed himself incapable, he could be removed from the
throne.
The diary of Krapovitski can serve as a proof that in the year 1787,
after Catherine’s return from her travels in the south of Russia, the
question as to the necessity of changing the succession to the
throne had already matured in the mind of the empress; she entered
upon the historical study of the matter and read “the right of will of
monarchs.” On the 20th of August, in connection with this same
question, Catherine discussed with her secretary the extent to which
the misfortunes of the czarevitch Paul Petrovitch had been caused
by the false opinion that as eldest son the throne must belong to him.
Further, on the 25th of August, Krapovitski writes: “Ukases as to the
heirs to the throne, named since the time of Catherine I, have been
asked for, and in the explanations a sort of displeasure was
manifested.” To what conclusions the historical study of the
measures taken by Peter the Great led Catherine may be seen from
the context of the following remarks, written by the empress’ own
hand:
“It must be acknowledged that the parent is unhappy who sees
himself obliged for the safeguard of the public good to remove his
offspring. This is a condition which accompanies or is joined to the
autocratic and parental power. And thus I esteem that the most wise
monarch Peter I had doubtlessly the strongest reasons for the
removal of his ungrateful, disobedient, and incapable son, who was
filled with hatred, malice, and viperous envy against him. He sought
to find some particle of evil in his father’s deeds and actions which
were conceived in the spirit of good, he listened to flatterers, shut his
ears to the truth, and nothing was so pleasing to him as to hear his
most glorious father defamed and spoken evil of. He himself was a
sluggard, a coward, double-faced, unstable, gloomy, timid, drunken,
passionate, obstinate, bigoted, ignorant man, of most mediocre
intelligence and of weak health.”
Independent of these remarks, Catherine’s ideas are even more
clearly expressed in other rough draughts concerning the Greek
project and written in her own hand. She writes as follows: “Should
the successes of the war give Russia the means and occasion to
drive out completely the enemies of the name of Christ from the
European frontiers, then Russia, in return for such an entirely
Christian service rendered to the human race, would reserve to
herself the restoration on the ruins of the barbaric power, of the
ancient Greek Empire. Russia would promise to leave such an
empire incomplete independence, to entrust and give it up to the
young Russian grand duke Constantine Pavlovitch, who must then
give his promise not to make in any case any hereditary or other
pretensions to the succession of all the Russias, as equally his
brother must do in regard to the Greek succession.” All these
writings clearly testify that at the time of the second Turkish war the
empress Catherine had definitively come to the conclusion that the
welfare of the state required the setting aside from the succession of
the czarevitch Paul Petrovitch and his replacement by the grand
duke Alexander Pavlovitch.
Meanwhile the czarevitch on his part did all that was possible to
justify in the eyes of Russia Catherine’s intentions to exclude him
from the throne. A contemporary who was in close relations with him,
T. V. Rostopschin writes as follows: “It is impossible to see without
shuddering and pity what the grand duke’s father does; it is as if he
sought for every means of inspiring hatred and disgust. He has taken
it into his head that disrespect and neglect are shown to him;
therefore for this reason, he catches and cavils at everything and
punishes without distinction. Every day one only hears of violence, of
quarrels about trifles of which any private individual would be
ashamed. He sees a revolution everywhere; he sees Jacobite in
everything.”
Catherine’s correspondence shows that already in the year 1791
the plan of excluding the czarevitch Paul from the throne was no
secret to those who were in her intimacy. On the 1st of September,
1791, the empress in a letter to Grimm expresses herself quite
definitely on the matter; in relating her supposition as to the
consequences of the French Revolution, she writes: “But this will not
be in my time and, I hope, not in the time of Alexander.” Finally on
the 14th of August, 1792, Catherine communicates to Grimm
considerations which allow the nomination of Alexander as heir to be
regarded as a matter settled. “Why should the coronation be hurried
on?” writes she; “in the words of Solomon there is a time for
everything. First we will marry Alexander, and then we will crown him
with all possible ceremonies, solemnities, and popular festivities. Oh,
how happy he will be himself, and how happy others will be with
him!” The following letter addressed by Catherine to Count V. P.
Mussin-Pushkin on the 14th of September, 1792, written by the