The life of a Russian conscript was so short that it often ended before he had even reached his camp. When they left home for their lifelong service (Potemkin later reduced it to twenty-five years), their families tragically wished them goodbye with laments and dirges as if they were already dead. The recruits were then marched away in columns, sometimes chained together. They endured a grim, brutal trauma, torn away from their villages and families. A modern historian rightly says this experience had most in common with the trans-Atlantic passage of negro slaves. Many died on thousand- verst marches, or arrived so weak at their destination that they soon perished: the Comte de Langeron, a Frenchman in Russian service later that century, estimated that 50 per cent of these recruits died. He graphically described the sadistic regime of beatings and discipline that was designed to keep these serf-soldiers from rebelling against their serfmaster-officers - though it may have been no worse than the cruelty of the Prussian army or the Royal Navy. Like the negro slaves, the Russian soldiers consoled themselves in their own colourful, sacred and warm culture: they earned only 7 roubles 50 kopecks a year (a premier-major's salary was 300 roubles), while Potemkin, for example, hardly a rich man, had received 18,000 roubles just for his part in the coup. So they shared everything in the soldiers' commune - the artel - that became their village, church, family, club, kitchen and bank, all rolled into one.4 They sang their rich repertoire of songs 'for five or six hours at a stretch without the slightest break'5 (and were later to sing many about Potemkin).
The Russian conscript was already regarded as 'the finest soldier in the world', wrote Langeron. 'He combines all the qualities which go to make a good soldier and hero. He is as abstemious as the Spaniard, as enduring as a Bohemian, as full of national pride as an Englishman and as susceptible to impulse and inspiration as French, Walloons, or Hungarians.'6 Frederick the Great was impressed and terrified by Russian courage and endurance during the Seven Years War and coined a word to describe their maniacal ursine savagery - 'les oursomanes'.7 Potemkin served in the cavalry, which had earned its own reputation for bloody bravery, especially since it fought beside Russia's ferocious irregular light cavalry, the Cossacks.
The Russian army was unique in Europe because, until the American and French Revolutions, armies drilled and fought for kings but not for ideas or nations. Most armies were made up of many nationalities - mercenaries, unwilling recruits and riffraff - who served a flag, not a country. But the Russian army was filled with Russian peasants who were recruited in mass 1еиёез from the roughly seven million souls available. This was seen as the reason for their almost mindless bravery.8
The officers, either Russian landowners addicted to gambling and debauch, or German, or later, French soldiers of fortune, were notoriously crueclass="underline" General Mikhail Kamensky, an extreme example, actually bit his soldiers. But they were also extraordinarily brave.9 The characteristics of their peasant chair du cannon - brutality, discipline, self-sufficiency, endurance, patriotism and stoicism in the face of appalling suffering - made the Russian army a formidable fighting force. 'The Turks are tumbling like ninepins,' went the
Russian saying; 'but, through the grace of God, our men stand firm, though headless.'10
Some contemporaries believed that war in the eighteenth century was become less bloody. Certainly, the dynasties of Europe, Habsburgs and Bourbons, at least pretended to fight according to the rules of aristocratic etiquette. But, for the Russians, wars against the Turks were different. After the centuries in which the Moslem Tartars, and then Turks, had threatened Orthodox Russia, the Russian peasant regarded this as a crusade. Havoc - the medieval giving of no quarter - was the order of battle.
Potemkin had only just arrived in Bar when the phoney war, giving both the unprepared Turks and Russians time to amass their forces, ended abruptly. On 16 June 1769, some 12,000 Tartar horsemen, under the command of the Crimean Khan, the Sultan's ally, who were raiding the Russian Ukraine, crossed the Dniester and attacked Potemkin's camp. Even then, the Tartars, armed with lassos and bows and arrows, were a vision from another age but they were the only Turkish forces ready for war. The Tartar Khan, Kirim Giray, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, was an aggressive and fearless cavalry commander. He was accompanied by Baron de Tott, a French officer seconded to Istanbul to improve the Turkish forces. He has left his account of this medieval expedition - the last of its kind. Five hundred years after Genghis Khan, the Crimean Tartars, the descendants of those Mongol hordes, were still Europe's finest horsemen. As they swept out of the Crimea through the Ukraine and towards the Russian troops still stationed in southern Poland, they must have looked and sounded as terrifying as their Mongol ancestors. Yet, like most of the irregular cavalry, they were undisciplined and usually too distracted by booty to be much strategic use. But the raid bought the Turks time to build up their armies, which were said to be 600,000 strong.
In his first battle, Potemkin engaged these wild Tartar and Turkish horsemen and repulsed them. He acquitted himself well, for 'Chamberlain Potemkin' appears in the list of those who distinguished themselves. This was the beginning of Potemkin's run of success. On 19 June, he fought again in the Battle of Kamenets and took part in further skirmishing, helping General Golitsyn take Kamenets.11 In St Petersburg Catherine celebrated these minor engagements with а 'Те Deum' on Sunday, 19 July, but the vacillating Golitsyn faltered before Khotin. Furious and impatient, in August the Empress recalled him. There are hints that Potemkin, via the Orlovs, played some part in the intrigue that dispensed with Golitsyn.12 But, if he was laughably slow, Golitsyn was at least lucky. He was opposed by a Grand Vizier, Mehmed Emin, who was happier reading Islamic poetry than slicing off heads. So Catherine was embarrassed when, before her orders had arrived at the front, Golitsyn pulled himself together and crossed the Dniester.
Major-General Potemkin and his cavalry was now in action virtually every day: he distinguished himself again on 30 June and repulsed Turkish attacks on 2 and 6 July. When Golitsyn finally recrossed the Dniester, Potemkin served at the taking of Khotin. He fought heroically with his cavalry on 14 August at the Battle of Prashkovsky and then helped defeat the Moldavanzi- Pasha on the 29th. 'I am immediately recommending the courage and skill shown in battle by Major-General Potemkin,' wrote Golitsyn, 'because until that time our cavalry has never acted with such discipline and courage as it did under the command of the Major-General.'13 Potemkin was becoming a war hero.
This praise must have been welcome to Catherine back in the capital. It was far from welcome at the Sublime Porte, where Sultan Mustafa III recalled his Grand Vizier: Emin-Pasha may have lost his mind at the front but, in Ottoman tradition, he lost his head as soon as he got home. These victories were too late for Golitsyn, however, who was consoled with a field-marshal's baton. The Foreign Minister's brother, General Peter Ivanovich Panin, assumed command of the Bender army, so that, in September, the First Army was taken over by Peter Rumiantsev. Thus began the command of one of the most glorious generals in the history of Russia, who became Potemkin's patron - and then his rival.
The new commander could not have been more different from the twenty- nine-year-old Major-General on his staff. Yet Potemkin respected him immensely. Aged forty-three, Rumiantsev was a tall, thin, fastidious soldier with a biting dry wit - and he was Countess Bruce's brother. Like his hero Frederick the Great, he 'loved and respected no one in the world', but was 'the most brilliant of all Russian generals, endowed with outstanding gifts'.14 Again like his hero, Rumiantsev was a severe disciplinarian yet a wonderful conversationalist. 'I've passed days with him tete-a-tete,' enthused Langeron, 'and never felt a moment's boredom.'15 He amassed a fortune and lived in 'ancient feudal magnificence', always displaying the most refined manners of a seigneur. This is unsurprising since he was a living specimen of Petrine history: he was probably Peter the Great's natural son.[16]