Catherine then turned her attention in good Enlightenment fashion to the rights of the religious dissidents in Poland, and in this question she overplayed her hand. She and Panin were willing to countenance limited constitutional reforms in Poland - though Frederick was not - but only in exchange for rights of toleration for religious minorities, while the Poles were largely adamant on the issue of Catholic supremacy, and so the prospects of reform on both issues soon foundered. Orthodox and Catholic confederacies formed, the former supported by Russian military intervention, and the conflict dragged on for years, opening up just such nefarious prospects as the conflict with the Turks that soon ensued.
It was perhaps predictable that a protracted Russian military engagement in Poland would draw into the maelstrom of East European politics a conflict with the other two border states, Turkey and Sweden, as well. The Turks reacted first. Alarmed at the portended shift of the balance of power in their part of the world and encouraged by the powers that shared their fears, the French and the Austrians, they responded to a cross-border raid of Cossack irregulars in summer 1768 and declared war.
The Russian military campaign may be characterised as distinguished and difficult at once. A variety of able commanders, Petr Rumiantsev, Aleksandr Suvorov, Grigorii Potemkin, dealt the Turks serious blows. Meantime, however, the situation grew immensely complicated as a variety of new factors intruded.
The first was Catherine's astonishingly stubborn and ambitious pretentions. She was determined to pursue the campaign to a glorious conclusion, to diminish the Turks if not ruin them and drive them out of Europe. These aspirations could only raise apprehensions elsewhere. The French were naturally committed to the Turks. The Austrians were threatened by Russian successes. The alliance of small and indigent Prussia with St Petersburg required Frederick to pay throughout the war subsidies that he could ill afford. The Swedes naturally found in Russian involvement in two fronts already an opportunity that they could scarcely overlook. In August 1772, the young Gustav III executed a coup d'etat to scrap the constitution of 1720, which had placed power in the hands of the four estates of the Riksdag (the Age of Freedom), enabling Russia (and other powers) to manipulate Swedish party politics advantageously. Gustav thus restored constitutional absolutism while Catherine was too engaged elsewhere to do anything about it. In fact, this development portended a new war on yet another front, and Catherine apprehensively deployed troops to deal with it, though it did not actually happen. At the same time, the plague broke out in Moscow (1771), and the stresses and strains of the war in the form of tax and recruitment burdens on the population provoked the infamous Pugachev rebellion (September 1773). This accumulation of liabilities would have undermined the resolve of a pantheon of heroes, but it did not move Catherine, and the longer she persisted, the more the powers of Europe moved to persuade her.
The resolution ofwhat appearedto be an adamantine stalemate of Catherine against Europe was one that had long been bruited about the chanceries of the continent, and it was recommended in this instance by the imaginative covetousness of Frederick: the partition of Poland. The Poles were helpless to resist, their territory would substitute for at least some of the sacrifices that Catherine might demand of the Turks, and the acquisitions that Austria and Prussia would share would reconcile them to Catherine's gains in the south. And so in August 1772 the deal was struck. Meantime, the Russo-Turkish War continued until the Turks, finally exhausted, conceded the essence of defeat and signed with St Petersburg the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi (July 1774), one of the most signal Russian military and diplomatic achievements of the era. It stipulated - ominously - the independence of the Crimea; the right of free commercial navigation on the Black Sea and through the straits; a large Turkish indemnity; the right to fortify Azov and Taganrog; annexation of the Black Sea coast between the Dnieper and the Bug; and ill-defined, controversial rights to some kind of protection of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
The turning of the 1770s to the 1780s marks a watershed in the nature and aspirations of Catherine's foreign policy. The new orientation is explained by several factors; in fact, by several developments of simple good fortune that came Catherine's way quite without any effort on her part.
The first of these was the by-product of the constant rivalry between Austria and Prussia. Joseph II, relentlessly restless, had long harboured the scheme of the so-called Bavarian Exchange. He wished to acquire large parts of Bavaria for Austria, compensating the Bavarian dynasty by the cession of the Austrian Netherlands. Opportunity arose in December 1777, when the Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbach family died without heirs, leaving a complicated and disputed succession. Joseph struck an agreement with the legitimate heir in a cadet branch of the family, the Elector Palatine, and thereupon decided to execute his claims to Bavarian dominions. Naturally, Frederick II objected to uncompensated Austrian aggrandisement, and he called upon his ally Catherine for support and for mediation of the conflict. In the meantime, Joseph similarly called upon his ally in Paris. Catherine was most reluctant to be involved in a war in Germany, as tension with the Turks threatened to renew the conflict in the south of Russia. At the same time, the French, on the verge of entering the American War of Independence, were similarly determined not to be encumbered by a war in Germany. As the crisis played out, the French and the Russians agreed to mediate jointly between the two German powers. The result was the signature of the Treaty of Teschen (May 1779), whereby Joseph acquired modest portions of Bavaria while promising to support comparable Prussian acquisitions elsewhere in Germany. For St Petersburg, the most significant feature of the problem was the acquisition by Russia of the status as guarantor of the German constitution, a serious gain in prestige as well as an instrument for legitimate participation in German politics.
The second such opportunity to come Catherine's way was the American War of Independence. In February 1778, France entered the war in alliance with the rebellious colonies. Virtually simultaneously, then, the two great land powers of Central Europe and the two great maritime powers of Western Europe had entered traditional conflicts with each other such as to divert all their attention away from that increasingly Russian sphere ofinfluence, Eastern Europe. Catherine did not hesitate to see her opportunity or to exploit it.
A British war always entailed the issue of neutral trade, in particular the neutrals' doctrine of 'free ships, free goods'. The British maintained that if trade in neutral ships between a mother country and its colonies was illegal in peacetime - the rules of mercantilism - then it was illegal in wartime. To put the matter another way, London insisted that neutral shipping had no right to deliver a combatant country from the pressure of its enemy's hostilities. The neutrals, on the other hand, invariably attempted to step into the breach that the British navy inflicted on trade between French colonies and the mother country. The American war simply revived an ancient issue.
In these circumstances, the British brought pressure against the Scandinavian neutrals and the Dutch. In this instance, the northern neutrals appealed to Catherine to support their cause. Catherine saw her opportunity and announced first her principles and subsequently the treaties of the League of Armed Neutrality (August-September 1780): no paper blockades; freedom of neutrals to trade along the coasts of belligerents; free ships, free goods; and a narrow definition of contraband. Eventually supported by Prussia and Austria as well, the league brought considerable pressure against British maritime practice. Wherein lay Catherine's advantage? It helped to free Russia from excessive dependence on British shipping. It enabled the neutrals to carry Russian trade formerly carried by British shipping. The force of the League of Armed Neutrality persuaded the British to make serious adjustments for a time in their cherished maritime practices. It won Catherine considerable diplomatic favour all over northern Europe, and in the wake ofthe lustre of her triumph at Teschen, it enhanced yet more Catherine's and Russia's prestige. It was a victory of considerable significance for Catherine.