Potemkin's career was amazing. The son of a poor Smolensk nobleman, from his youth he dreamed of a brilliant future, dreamed of becoming or minister, or bishop. He studied at Moscow University as one of its first students, was awarded a gold medal, and then was expelled for not attending lectures, because he became too carried away with independent reading and abandoned his professorship. Having entered military service, he was a guards non-commissioned officer when the coup broke out, “he elevated Catherine to the throne, and unwittingly, as part of his regiment, found himself a participant in this coup; Having accidentally served the new empress by handing her a lanyard, he immediately went out into the public, was promoted to second lieutenant and chamber cadet, and was awarded 400 souls of peasants. When the first Turkish war began, it was already true. chamberlain, and went to war as a volunteer. Having earned it for the war$; rank of general, soon appeared in the capital as a messenger from Rumyantsev, announcing victory, and had the good fortune to please the empresses; After this, correspondence began between them. Finally, in the year the war ended, he was discharged to the empress and appointed her adjutant general... This was in 1774.
From then on, favors poured in on Potemkin. Catherine raised him to the dignity of count, Gosif II to prince of the Roman Empire. Moreover, he received a golden sword with diamonds, a portrait of the Empress with diamonds, decorated with George and St. Andrew's ribbon, and Polish, Prussian, Danish and Swedish orders; All that was missing was the English Order of the Garter. In St. Petersburg, he had his own Anichkov Palace, in Tsarskoe Self, the Babo Palace
lovsky Foreign ministers argued with him about state affairs; he was, as it were, the chief minister of the empress.
„Prince Potemkin.
Catherine highly regarded Potemkin, considering him a true nobleman, her incorruptible servant,
incapable of any betrayal, and called him her student, her friend, her idol. In her letters she called him “Dad.”
Potemkin's riches were countless. Money, names, peasants, houses—he had countless of them all. In his name there were several large factories and factories, glass, mirror, cloth and others - these factories generated enormous income. Because of his names, Potemkin supplied supplies to the army - this also brought more profits. In Crimea he had salt lakes, giving up to 300 thousand rubles. per year, And finally, he could endlessly draw money from the treasury and unaccountably dispose of any government sums; whole millions were given out at his first request. (According to this, he also used credit, the banker Suterlyand counted hundreds of thousands in debt for him. He even owed 19 thousand to St. Petersburg cab drivers. One of his suits cost not much, not little, 280 thousand. And once at his place, crystal bowls filled with diamonds were served, and these diamonds were distributed to the ladies by the spoonful. Ego could only afford Potemkin.
Remaining Catherine's chief minister for 15 years, Potemkin was her leader in all her important affairs; he directed mainly her foreign policy. The Greek project, a plan to expel the Turks from Europe and restore the Greek Empire, with led. Prince Konstantin (grandson of the Empress) to the throne, created by Potemkin; He
I constantly remembered the Constantinople campaigns of Oleg and Igor, and dreamed of the same campaigns of Catherine. He especially insisted on the annexation of the Crimea: “Believe me,” he wrote in a report to the empresses, “that by this means you will receive immortal glory, such as no sovereign in Russia has ever had before. This glory will pave the way for yet another and greater glory: with the Crimea you will also get dominance in the Black Sea; depending on you, the passage will be blocked Turks and feed them or starve them.
“No matter how gloriously you have done, so much shame and reproach will you have from posterity, who will say: she could have, but she didn’t want to, or she missed it.” Crimea was a direct road there, to Constantinople. Catherine willingly succumbed to these suggestions of Poemkin, and when her second grandson Konstantin was born, she wrote about him: “This one is more n5ned than the elder, and as soon as the cold air touches him, he hides his nose in diapers; he wants him to be warm, damn it... We already know what we know”; and after 2 years she ordered to knock out a medal depicting the grandson of Constantine - and the Black Sea with Constantinople and St. Soetey.