The
Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin
by Sebag
Montefiore, S.
Sebag Montefiore
Book Description
Prince Grigory Potemkin was Catherine the Great's lover,
secret husband, and partner in ruling the Russian Empire. Their affair
was so tumultuous, they negotiated an arrangement that allowed them to
share power while he was free to love his beautiful nieces, and Catherine,
her favorites. But they never stopped loving each other. Their endearing
and passionate relationship remains one of history's most remarkable love
affairs.
Potemkin shone as an outstandingly gifted statesman, winning
the Crimea, founding the Black Sea Fleet, reforming the Cossacks, planning
new cities like Sebastopol and Odessa, and making Russia a Near Eastern
power - achievements in war and peace that emulated his hero Peter the
Great.
He embodied the strengths and weaknesses of Russia itself
- volatile, ebullient, handsome, sensual, and always astonishing. His bizarre
magnificence enchanted and scandalized Europe. Yet he disdained his own
success.
He was surrounded by a cosmopolitan court that included
brilliant Americans, such as Admiral John Paul Jones, and Lewis Littlepage,
a friend of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Both served under Potemkin
against the Turks.
An obsessive Anglophile, he commissioned Joshua Reynolds
and created an English garden wherever he stopped for the night. In 1787,
this master showman presided over Catherine's Crimean river-tour, so sumptuous
it was compared to Cleopatra's progress. Potemkin's enemies claimed he
displayed fake houses - "Potemkin villages" - a smear this biography lays
to rest.
After five years' new research in archives from Petersburg
to Odessa, Sebag Montefiore shoes how Potemkin and Catherine, with their
younger lovers, created their own "family." He brings blazingly to life
Potemkin's loving partnership with Catherine and restores him to his place
as a colossus of the eighteenth century. When he died, Catherine was heartbroken.
She said there could never be another Potemkin.
Hardcover from Thomas Dunne Books
Book Published: 01 October, 2001 |
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