Prince of Princes -The Life of Potemkin [Simon Sebag Montefiore] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 226

absurdities of the central state planning of truth.

[96] Suvorov, according to the histories, was supposed to have complained to Catherine that jealous Potemkin was excluding him from senior commands. The truth was the opposite.

[97] Her courtiers were old too: Ivan Chernyshev left such a disgusting stench in the Empress's apartments that the floor had to be doused in lavender water every time he left.

[98] Lazhkarev, whom Westerners compared to a gypsy clown, once repelled an Islamic mob in Negroponte by leaping off a balcony with a basin of water, threatening them with the horror of instant baptism. Later, in Alexander I's entourage at Tilsit in 1807, it was he who met Napoleon and negotiated Russia's annexation of Bessarabia, ceded by the Porte in the 1808 treaty, in return for French domination of Europe, f While Potemkin later came to represent hated Russian imperialism to the Rumanians, a French visitor, forty years on, found that the Jassy boyars still regarded him as an early father of Rumanian nationalism. This made sense since Dacia roughly forms Rumania. However, the sole legacy of the name was President Ceaucescu's decision to name the national make of car the 'Dacia'.

ф The Ghika Palace still stands: it is now the Medical Faculty of Ia§i University. It has been expanded, but it still has its original Classical portico.

[99] It was Sutherland's English roast beef which Potemkin so enjoyed, when he came for dinner, that he had it wrapped up and took it home with him.

[100] Potemkin also suggested that, if the Turks would back a Russian nominee for King of Poland, Russia would consider keeping the Bug as the border. In other words, Russia would use Ottoman help to retake Poland and, in either case, Potemkin had the potential to secure a crown for himself - Poland or Dacia. Nonetheless, even for Poland, it is hard to believe Potemkin would have accepted the Bug border, which would have meant surrendering Ochakov.

[101] The surviving brother, Nikolai Raevsky, was the heroic general of 1812 who held the Raevsky Redoubt at the Battle of Borodino. Much later, he befriended Pushkin, who travelled with him, enjoying his stories of Potemkin and 1812. The Raevskys were the sons of Samoilov's sister.

f Virtually every history, Russian or English, contains this piece of Suvorov legend. This was supposedly the end of their relationship, in which the jealous Potemkin got his comeuppance from the genius Suvorov. In fact, this encounter probably never happened. No witness in Jassy, such as Langeron, mentions it. Potemkin was in Bender not Jassy after Ismail. Recent research by V. S. Lopatin, who has completely disproved most of the accepted pillars of the Potemkin-Suvorov relationship, shows that the two could not have met for two months - that is, not until the first week in February.

[102] The author found what is probably the sole surviving copy of this card, addressed to Countess Osterman, in the archives of the Odessa State Local History Museum.

[103] Potemkin's tsar of gardeners, William Gould, 'lived in splendour' in the Palladian villa Catherine had built for him in the grounds of the Taurida (still called the 'gardener's house') and 'gave entertainment to the nobility'. He died in luxurious retirement at Ormskirk in Lancashire in 1812.

[104] When the Emperor Paul set out to deface the building after his mother's death, these little rooms so disgusted him that he did not ruin them. He simply sealed them and they alone remain today.

[105] Indeed some histories claim that this was the last time they met. In fact, Potemkin remained in Petersburg for three more eventful months.

[106] Some Polish historians regard this condition as a sham to delude Potemkin, because Catherine already knew there would be no war with Prussia. This is clearly not so. England had blinked but not surrendered. The conditions placed on Potemkin's action were entirely reasonable. The accompanying documents discussing the creation of Polish forces to back up a Confederation show how they worked together just before his Taurida ball: he drafted a proposal that required recruitment of Polish forces, to which she added her thoughts in the margin.

[107] Mansour was despatched to Petersburg, and perished three years later in the dungeons of Schliisselburg.

[108] It is possible but unlikely that some of Potemkin's letters to 'Praskovia' quoted earlier were addressed to Praskovia Golitsyna, not Praskovia Potemkina.

[109] Mozart died soon afterwards on 24 November/5 December 1791.

[110] The Beautiful Greek was presumably no longer required - she disappeared as his illness worsened. Branicka probably ordered her to entertain the Polish magnates arriving to see the Prince, f Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarianism measured the success of a ruler by the happiness he gave to his subjects, would have appreciated this: one wonders if Samuel had discussed the idea with the Prince on one of their long carriage rides across the south.

[111] It is now appropriately Ia§i University's School of Medicine, though others say the autopsy was conducted in the Cantacuzino Palace.

[112] Mikhail Potemkin died strangely in his carriage on his way home from Jassy. His brother Count Pavel Potemkin was later accused of murdering and robbing a Persian prince when he was viceroy of the Caucasus: he wrote a poem pleading his innocence, then died of a fever. Some said he committed suicide, f The almost 4 million of his 'private' income sounds much too low considering Catherine regularly bought his palaces for sums like half a million roubles. The sums of State money were much more than the entire annual revenue of the whole Russian Empire, which usually oscillated between forty and forty-four million roubles - though it was rising fast.

[113] This disappeared a few years after Potemkin's funeral. Two hundred years later in October 1998, the author, assisted by a Rumanian priest and two professors, began to search the Golia church in Jassy and found the board and its beautifully inscribed memorial under a piano behind a pile of prayer books: it was dusty but undamaged.

[114] The top row reads 'Ochakov 1788, Crimea and Kuban 1783, Kherson 1778'. The two in the middle: 'Akkerman 1789' and 'Ekaterinoslav 1787'. At the bottom: 'Bender 1789' and 'Nikolaev 1788'.