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The bronze barrels cast with
slightly flared muzzles, prominent base-rings and raised astragals, the
suspension loops in the form of eagles and the first reinforce cast with the
Arms of Count Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin (1739-91) in the style used by him
1774-1776. The carriages and wheels of wood, bound and reinforced with iron
strips and painted red, one having adhered to the cheeks the painted and
coroneted cipher GP in oil upon a canvas disc.
Overall length 50
1/2”, barrel length
28 1/2”, bore 1
3/8”.
This beautiful pair of model cannon
well exemplify the magnificence of their original owner, a man whom Jeremy
Bentham (1748-1832) called “Prince of Princes”. They also exemplify
the attention that he paid both to his own status and to the matériel of
the Russian military machine, a machine in which he served and did much to
improve during the middle years of the eighteenth century.
The guns are miniature versions of the
standard Russian cannon of the mid-eighteenth century and little different to
field cannon used by all European powers for a century after c.1690. They are
recognisably Russian from the form taken by their suspension loops -
colloquially called “dolphins” because the cannon suspension loops of
most other nations took the form of dolphins: the loops are eagles, a
double-headed form of which was, and now is again, an essential part of the
Arms of Russia and of its Romanov emperors and empresses. Their red-painted,
split-trail wooden carriages and wheels are heavily reinforced with iron bands
to protect the wood from the constant and excessive percussion that use would
have involved, whether in bouncing behind a limber pulled by a team of horses,
or in being simply manoeuvred for use on the battlefield. The attention to
detail on these models must imply that, while miniature, they are not toys:
they are models, capable of being served by a gun team and fired just like real
cannon.
While identifiably Russian, the cannon
can be definitely ascribed to Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin by reference to
the detailed and finely cast armorials on the barrels of each gun. The whole
point of heraldry is what it signifies and Potemkin’s Arms are redolent of
his birth, his qualities, his achievements and his rewards.
His status at birth, as the son of a
Russian minor landowner of Polish descent, is shown by his shield of arms,
which may be blazoned as, gules (red), issuant from the sinister edge an arm
embowed, vambraced or (gold), invelloped, and holding in bend sinister a sword,
proper (in the usual colours for a sword), its hilt and pommel or (gold): the
colours of the shield are, of course, not present on the casting. Potemkin was
educated in the classics and was to remain a Greek scholar and Hellenophile all
his life: thus the Russo-Greek inscription above his arms - not a motto but,
rather, a paean to his status and to one of his qualities, ΕΥΓΕΝΕΙΑ
(well-born) ΑΡΕΤИ
(virtuous).
He arrived at the Imperial Court in
1760 to begin his military service as a non-commissioned officer in the
Imperial Horse Guards. Two years later he was a junior player in the successful
plot to unseat the Tsar, Peter II, and to replace him with his consort,
Catherine. He was soon to catch the new Empress’s eye - as a succession of
young officers did - and September 1762 was appointed one of the Gentlemen of
the Bedchamber. While this office did not, yet, involve Potemkin in services of
an amatory nature, it would have enabled him to ensign his crest with the
plumes of a nobleman - a distinction accorded to gentlemen of rank in the
Imperial Household. In 1768, by which time he was installed as the current
favourite of the Empress, Potemkin was appointed Chamberlain: this appointment
would have enabled him to place the Chamberlain’s ceremonial key of office
upon his shield - it can be seen there, upon the cloud.
In 1769, Russia went to war with
Turkey. Potemkin was given the rank of major general in the cavalry and sent
south on his first military adventure: he was conspicuously successful,
showered with honours and rapidly promoted. By the Spring of 1774, and the
ending of the Russo-Turkish war, he was General-in-Chief, Vice-President of the
College of War, Commander-in-Chief of all Irregular Forces, Governor-General of
New Russia (the territories bordering the Black Sea that had been captured from
the Turks), lieutenant-colonel of the élite Preobrazhensky Guard
regiment (of which the Empress was colonel) and captain of the Empress’s
bodyguards, the Chevaliers-Gardes. Significantly, from the point of view of his
armorials as we see them today on his model cannon, he had received the
insignia of several important Orders of Chivalry: the Russian Orders of St Anne
(1770), of St George, 3rd class (1770), of St Alexandr Nevski (1774) and of St
Andrew (1774), together with the Swedish Order of the Seraphim (1774) and the
Prussian Order of the Black Eagle (1774). His shield of Arms has the sashes and
badge of four orders adorning it, while the helm atop his shield has further
insignia (probably the cross pattée of the Order of St George)
encircling its neck. He could not have draped such a number of sashes across
his shield prior to 1774 and so the casting of such armorials upon the cannon
cannot predate that year - his year of greatest military triumph. His military
triumph is further indicated by the elaborate and detailed trophy of
(implicitly captured) arms upon which his shield or Arms is placed.
Created a Russian count in 1775, he
was further ennobled as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1776, with the
title of Serene Highness and the surname Potemkin-Tavricheski, whereupon his
heraldry changed markedly. His personal arms from that point onward were borne
upon an escutcheon in the centre of a shield that was, quarterly, I & IV,
or (gold), a double eagle sable ensigned with Russian Imperial Crowns or
(gold), and on a chief gules (red), a mullet argent (silver), and II & III,
azure (blue) a mural crown unmasoned. He also acquired a different crest and
some supporters for his shield. Thus, the cannons’ armorials must pre-date
1776 and so were almost certainly cast for Potemkin in about 1775.
Both Potemkin and his Empress, who was
increasingly being referred to as Catherine The Great - as much because of
Potemkin’s successes in adding to her territories by a series of wars as
an answer to the similar nomenclature of Prussia’s King Frederick II,
interested themselves in the state and equipment of Russia’s armed forces.
Potemkin created the Black Sea fleet, once the Turks had been ousted from
control of that sea, and established both the port of Kherson as a base for
that fleet and the beginnings of the great naval base of Sebastopol - its Greek
name being selected in deference to Potemkin’s fondness for Greek culture.
Both Potemkin and Catherine oversaw important changes in the uniforms of the
Imperial armed forces and encouraged the establishment of arms factories and
cannon foundries: their joint ambition was to build upon the foundations laid
by Tsar Peter I, “the Great”, in making Russia into a powerful
nation. It is probable that these models were cast and manufactured as
demonstration pieces for Potemkin, in order that he could see what the
full-size versions would look like; they may even have been gifts to this most
important Officer of State as a means of obtaining his patronage and intended
to adorn one of his many palaces. Although they could be used, they would have
had no serious battlefield use at the time but, as guns ensigned with
Potemkin’s crest, would be impressive and decisive symbols of his status
in a society in which such status was all-important.
There is no doubt that Prince Potemkin
was the most magnificent, the most influential and the most important Russian
commoner of the mid-eighteenth century. Civilised, educated and tolerant, he
had an enquiring Enlightenment mind, a circle of eminent correspondents in a
variety of languages and a legendary capacity for pleasure of all kinds. He is
long since dust and, indeed, the subject of legend: these lovely model cannon
remain as a lasting memorial to him, truly the “Prince of
Princes”.
Image reproduced by courtesy of Peter
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