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This was what happened when Rumiantsev’s squares stormed the Turkish camp at the Battle of Larga, shrugging off the Turkish charges with stoical endurance and blasts of artillery. Seventy-two thousand Turks and Tartars were forced to evacuate their fortifications and flee. Potemkin, attached to Prince Nikolai Repnin’s corps, commanded the advance guard that attacked the camp of the Crimean Khan and was, according to Rumiantsev, ‘among the first to attack and capture its fortification’. Potemkin was again decorated, this time with the Order of St George, Third Class: he wrote to thank the Empress.25
The new Grand Vizier now advanced with the main Turkish army to prevent the union of the two Russian armies of Rumiantsev and Panin. He crossed the Danube and marched up the Pruth to meet the fleeing troops from the Battle of Larga. On 21 July 1770, only slightly to the south of Larga, Rumiantsev marched his 25,000 troops towards the 150,000 men of the Grand Vizier’s massed Turkish army, which had camped behind triple fortifications near Lake Kagul. Despite the numerical inequality, he decided to attack. Using the lessons and confidence provided by Larga, he formed five squares facing the main Turkish positions. Potemkin and his cavalry defended the army’s transport against ‘the attacks of numerous Tartar hordes and prevented them from…attacking the army’s rear’. As he gave Potemkin this duty, Rumiantsev is supposed to have told him: ‘Grigory Alexandrovich, bring us our provisions, balanced on the top of your sabre.’26
The Turks, who had learned nothing from Larga, were completely surprised, fought savagely for the whole day but were finally routed in scenes of desperate carnage, leaving 138 guns, 2,000 prisoners, and 20,000 dead on the field. Rumiantsev brilliantly exploited his victory by pushing down towards the lower Danube: on 26 July Potemkin helped Repnin take the fortress of Izmail, then that of Kilia on 10 August. General Panin stormed Bender on 16 September, and Rumiantsev finally closed his campaign with the taking of Brailov on 10 November.27 There was one more magnificent piece of news.
Catherine had sent the Russian Baltic Fleet, proud creation of Peter the Great, across the North Sea, through the English Channel and the Straits of Gibraltar all the way to hit the Turkish rear in the eastern Mediterranean. Its admiral was Count Alexei Orlov, who had never been to sea, but its real lights were two Scottish officers, John Elphinstone and Samuel Greig. Despite Peter the Great’s brave attempts to inspire sea-legs in Russian ploughmen, only the Livonians or Estonians took to the ocean. There were few Russian officers and most of them were lamentable. When Elphinstone grumbled, Catherine replied: ‘The ignorance of the Russians is due to youth; that of the Turks to decrepitude.’28 England helped the Russian expedition: London did not yet regard the Turk as a natural ally or the ‘Bear’ as a natural enemy. The ‘Eastern Question’ had not yet been asked. On the contrary, France was England’s enemy, Turkey a French ally. By the time the leaky Russian fleet reached England, 800 sailors were ill. These seasick Russian peasants must have been an incongruously pathetic sight as they re-rigged, watered and recovered in Hull and Portsmouth.
After gathering at their base, Leghorn (Livorno) in Tuscany, Orlov’s fleet finally reached Ottoman waters. It failed to raise a rebellion among the tricky Greeks and Montenegrins and then indecisively engaged the Turkish fleet off Chios. The Turks withdrew to the deceptive safety of Chesme harbour. Samuel Greig arranged a fiery lullaby for the sleeping Turks. Overnight on 25/26 June, his fireships floated into the harbour of Chesme. This ‘ingenious ambuscade’ turned the harbour into an inferno. ‘Encumbered with ships, powder and artillery,’ Chesme, wrote Baron de Tott, watching from the Turkish side, ‘soon became a volcano that engulfed the whole naval force of the Turks’.29 Eleven thousand Turks perished. Alexei Orlov boasted to Catherine that the water of Chesme was stained incarnadine, and the victorious Empress passed this macabre and distinctly unEnlightened vision on to an excited Voltaire.30 It was the most disastrous day for Turkish arms since the Battle of Lepanto.
When news of Chesme reached St Petersburg, so soon after the glories of Kagul, the Russian capital exploded with joy. There were ‘Te Deums’ and rewards for every sailor in the fleet inscribed simply: ‘I was there.’ Catherine rewarded Rumiantsev for Kagul with his field-marshal’s baton and the construction of an obelisk in her park at Tsarskoe Selo, while Alexei Orlov got the title of Chesmensky (‘of Chesme’). It was the greatest array of Russian triumphs since Poltava. Catherine was riding high – especially in Europe: Voltaire actually jumped up and down on his sickbed at Ferney and sang at the thought of so many dead infidels.31
Potemkin had covered himself in glory in this year of Russian victories and decided to capitalize on his new success. When operations ceased in November 1770, he asked Rumiantsev for leave to go to St Petersburg. Had someone raised his hopes that Catherine would receive him with open arms? Afterwards, Potemkin’s enemies claimed that Rumiantsev was relieved to be rid of him. But he actually admired Potemkin’s brains and military record, and approved this trip, charging him to protect the interests of himself and his army. His letters to his protégé were as paternal as Potemkin’s to him were filial.
Potemkin returned to Petersburg with the prestige of a war hero and Rumiantsev’s enthusiastic recommendations: ‘This officer of great ability can make far-sighted observations about the land which has been the theatre of war, which deserve your Majesty’s attention and respect and, because of this, I’m entrusting him with all the events that have to be reported to Her Majesty.’32
The Empress, in an exultant mood after Kagul and Chesme, welcomed him warmly: we know from the Court Journal that he was invited to dine with Catherine eleven times during his short stay.33 Legend says there was a private audience at which Potemkin could not resist more dramatics on bended knee. He and Catherine agreed to correspond, apparently through her librarian Petrov and trusted Chamberlain Ivan Perfilevich Yelagin – useful allies around the Empress. We know little of what happened behind closed doors but one senses that they felt the stirrings of something that both knew could become serious.*2 Whether the private state of Catherine’s relationship with Grigory Orlov himself was already shaky, Count Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky had increased the family credit at Court. Potemkin was too early to displace Grigory Orlov, but the trip was not wasted.34
Grigory Orlov certainly noticed Potemkin’s welcome and made sure he returned to the army. Potemkin went back late in February, bearing a letter from Orlov to Rumiantsev in which the favourite recommended Potemkin and asked his commander to be his ‘tutor and guide’. This was a benign way for Orlov to remind his younger rival of his place, but also a sign that he had become much more important on that trip to Petersburg. He was marked.35
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Within weeks, the fighting had started again. But, compared to the feats of the year before, 1771 was to be a disappointment in the theatre of Moldavia and Wallachia, today’s Rumania, where Potemkin served. When the Turks sensibly refused to endure any more of Rumiantsev’s battles, the Field-Marshal spent the year attacking Turkish positions on the lower Danube, pushing into Wallachia. Potemkin did welclass="underline" given the task of holding the Kraovsky region, he ‘not only repulsed the enemy…but struck at him too. He was the first to head across the Danube.’ On 5 May, he pulled off a minor coup when he attacked the small town of Zimbry on the other side of the Danube, ravaged it, burned enemy provisions and stole the ships of their flotilla, which he brought back to the Russian side of the river. On 17 May, Potemkin defeated and pursued 4,000 Turks near the Ol’ta river – ‘a glorious and famous feat’, according to Rumiantsev, ‘achieved only thanks to Potemkin’s skill and courage’. The Turks attacked him on 27 May but were defeated and driven off. He joined up with Repnin again, and together they drove off a powerful Turkish corps under a seraskier (Turkish equivalent of a field-marshal) on 10 June and then took36 Bucharest.