(1787 A.D.] to be arrested as a traitor and renegade at Khotin, to be conveyed to Rhodes, and there despatched by the bow-string (1787). The plan contemplated by Potemkin and the empress was to raise the grand duke Constantine, second grandson of the empress, to the dignity of emperor of Byzantium, at the expense of the Turks, and at the same time to incorporate the kingdom of Poland with Russia. The new city of Kherson was no sooner ready for this grand theatrical representation than the empress was to travel thither to receive the homage of her new subjects, and to deceive the world by an ostentatious display of magnificence and pomp.

Joseph II was invited to meet the empress in Kherson, in order to consult with her upon a partition of the Turkish Empire; but Constantine himself was in the first instance left at home. The luxury and extravagance exhibited by Potemkin during the empress' journey and the fêtes prepared for her reception and entertainment at Kherson were worthy of the heaven-storming characters of the pair. They remind us of the extravagance of the Abassides and the descendants of Timur, with this difference that civilisation and the arts were strangers to the people of the caliphs and of the Great Mogul. Never perhaps was there seen in monarchical Europe, where such things are not rare, such a gross abuse of the wealth and well-being of the people, and such insult cast on public opinion by a contemptible comedy, as on the occasion of this imperial progress.

It began in January, 1787, and was continued night and day. To facilitate the journey by night, Potemkin had caused great piles of wood to be erected at every fifty perches, which were kindled at night-fall, and imparted to the whole district almost the brightness of day. On the sixth day the cortège reached Smolensk, and fourteen days afterwards Kiev, where the degraded Polish magnates, who made a trade of their nation, their honour, and their friendship, were assembled to offer their homage to the empress and join in the revelry of her court. Potemkin himself had gone forward in advance in order to arrange the side-scenes of the theatre which he erected from St. Petersburg to Kherson. Deserts were peopled for the occasion; and palaces were raised in the trackless wild. The nakedness of the plains was disguised by villages built for the purpose of a day, and enlivened by fireworks. Chains of mountains were illuminated. Fine roads were opened by the army. Howling wildernesses were transformed into blooming gardens; and immense flocks and herds were driven to the sides of the road in order to delight the eyes of the empress in her hasty transit. The rocks in the Dnieper were sprung, that the empress might descend the stream as conveniently as she had travelled thither in the chamber of her sledge. At the beginning of May the whole party embarked on the river in fifteen splendid galleys at Krementshuk, and on the following day Stanislaus of Poland presented himself at Kaniev, in order, as it were, by his insipid and pitful character to serve as a foil to the monarchial splendour of a woman. He accepted an alms of 100,000 rubles for the expenses of his journey, was very graciously received by Potemkin, treated with coldness and indifference by the empress, and as if his royal Polish income was simply a Russian pension he begged for an augmentation. He was not ashamed to acknowledge to all the courts whose ambassadors accompanied the empress that he regarded his kingdom as a Russian province, for he besought the empress to grant the succession to his nephew and to his nation the free navigation of the Dnieper. As is customary in such cases, there was no lack of promises; but none of his petitions were really granted, for it was impossible either to value or respect him, and in his situation he was incapable of inspiring fear.

[1787 A.D.]

The emperor Joseph, who had anticipated the arrival of his ally in Kherson, travelled to meet her as far as Kaidak, and returned with her. He soon perceived that she was shamefully deluded by the appearance of prosperity, civilisation, and population, and that soon as she had passed through all was again to become empty and deserted. Like the villages, flocks, and men by the wayside, the new buildings in which the distinguished travellers passed their nights and the houses and shops in Kherson all vanished again when they had served their temporary purpose. It will not be regarded as incredible that 7,000,000 rubles were expended on the journey, when it is known that the throne itself, which was erected for the empress in what was called the admiralty at Kherson, cost 14,000. Catherine made a magnificent entry into the new city, passing under a triumphal arch, on which was inscribed in the Greek tongue, "The way to Byzantium."

OUTBREAK OF THE AUSTRO-RUSSIAN WAR WITH TURKEY

After the meeting at Kherson the two imperial allies prepared to direct their forces against the whole extent of the Turkish frontier, from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. Care was taken, however, to furnish an excuse for the participation of Austria, by inciting the Turks to make the first attack; for only in such a case was Austria bound to furnish auxiliaries to the Russians. To this end Bulgakov, Catherine's ambassador at Constantinople, was ordered by every means to excite commotions among the Greeks, Bulgarians, Wallachians, and Slavonians, as well as in Egypt and in Asia Minor. The Turks, justly incensed at these intrigues, insisted upon a distinct declaration of their views on the part of the Russians; and when they received for answer only the usual diplomatic subterfuge that the ambassador must wait for instructions from St. Petersburg, they immediately declared war, sent Bulgakov to the state prison of the Seven Towers, and nothing but the threatening interference of the English minister could have prevented them from inflicting summary vengeance upon him, to show their righteous displeasure at the conduct of his government. Catherine and Joseph had now gained their wishes. The Turks were the first to declare war, and a pretence was thus afforded to the Russians to call upon the Austrians for that aid which they were bound by treaty to render in case of an attack on the part of the Turks.

Catherine published a manifesto, in which after a long enumeration of the pretended wrongs ascribed to the Porte, she added that, provoked by a conduct, in itself so offensive, she had, very unwillingly, been obliged to have recourse to arms, as the only means left her for the support of those rights which she had acquired at the price of so much blood, and to avenge her wounded dignity, suffering from the violence that had been used towards her minister at Constantinople; that entirely innocent of all the calamities inevitably engendered by war, she relied with confidence, not only on the Almighty protection and the assistance of her allies, but on the prayers of the Christian world, for triumph in a cause so just as that which she was obliged to defend. This manifesto was soon followed up by a second, which declared that the Porte had arrogantly presumed to insist on a categorical answer to its absurd demands; and that the empress, forced to repel the aggression of the enemy of the Christian name, armed herself with confidence, under the protection of that just God who had so long and so powerfully shielded the Russian Empire.

Had Potemkin been as great a general as he was capable of devising magnificent plans and playing the Russian tyrant, great things would have been accomplished in 1787, for all the preparations for the war had been made long

[1787-1788 A.D.] beforehand. Field-Marshal Romanzov was to share the command of the army with Potemkin; that is to say, he was to do all the work, and the other was to engross all the merit. Romanzov declined this thankless office, and Potemkin stood alone at the head of the army; but he did not succeed in deceiving posterity, for no one has ever ascribed to him what was effected by the officers under his command by Repnin, Paul Potemkin, Suvarov, Kamenskoi, Galitzin, and Kutusov, all of whom became more or less renowned in later wars. Potemkin found in Suvarov precisely such an instrument as he needed; for to that general the will of the empress or her favourite was in all cases a law paramount to all moral obligations, or any feelings of humanity. He was sent to Kinburn, the chief object of the campaign being apparently the siege of Otchakov, by the main body under Potemkin, whilst other divisions were despatched to observe the movements of the Tatars in the Kuban.

Kinburn was a small fortress occupied by the Russians, and situated upon a promontory directly opposite to Otchakov, in and around which the Turkish army was stationed. The object of Suvarov's mission was to frustrate the efforts of the Turkish fleet to land a division on the promontory of Kinburn; and he executed the task in a masterly manner. At first he remained perfectly quiet in the fortress, after having erected a battery at the extremity of the promontory, in order to cannonade the Turkish ships from the land, at the same moment in which they might be attacked by the Russian fleet. He allowed the Turks to proceed without molestation till they had disembarked from six thousand to seven thousand men; he then sent a few regiments of Cossacks against them, and at the same time charged them at the head of two battalions of infantry with fixed bayonets, and exterminated them all. Immediately afterwards he employed his battery against the Turkish fleet. The prince of Nassau-Siegen, who had the command of the Russian gunboats of Niolaiev, attacked the Turkish ships at the very entrance of what is called the Liman, and within range of Suvarov's guns, to whose well-directed fire he was indebted for a great share of the advantages which he gained.

The whole remaining part of the year 1787, as well as the spring and a great part of the summer of 1788, elapsed without anything important having been undertaken; the whole of the Russian land-forces were, however, directed towards the Bug, in order to push forward with the greatest expedition to the Danube. The Turks had already suffered defeats at sea and in the Caucasus. The Russian fleet in the Black Sea, which was almost wholly commanded by foreigners, nearly annihilated the Turkish navy; generals Tallitzin and Tekeli massacred the Tatars of the Kuban, and Tamara reduced Georgia and Lesghistan. In August, Potemkin at length marched against Otchakov, but very wisely left the whole conduct of the military operations to Suvarov, the victor of Kinburn. The Russian operations were delayed in expectation of an Austrian army, which, in connection with a Russian force under Soltikov, was to make an incursion into Moldavia. This delay was protracted till King Gustavus began to exhibit symptoms of making an attack on the provinces contiguous to Sweden, which were now deprived of means of defence. He had to revenge on Russia a long series of wrongs, crowned by the intolerable conduct of Catherine's ambassador Razumovski, whom she had sent to form conspiracies against him, and to persecute and insult him in his own capital.

THE SWEDISH WAR (1788-1790 A.D.)

Gustavus III would also willingly have induced Denmark to take part in the movement against Russia; in this, however, he was unsuccessful, although