During the following year, 1789, the whole course of the Dneister fell to the Russian army. The fortress towns of Ackkerman and Bender capitulated without a fight—and Bender alone had a garrison of twenty thousand men. That same year, Belgrade and Bucharest were taken by the Austrians. In February 1790, however, Catherine’s friend and ally Emperor Joseph II died of tuberculosis. Joseph was childless, and he was succeeded by his brother, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who became Emperor Leopold II. Leopold had little interest in continuing Austria’s war with Turkey. In June 1790, he and the sultan agreed on an armistice, and in August, they concluded a peace, leaving Catherine to fight alone. Despite Austria’s withdrawal, the Russian army reached the lower Danube, capturing one town after another until they reached Izmail, one of the most formidable fortresses in Europe. This massive bastion of towers and ramparts, defended by thirty-five thousand men and 265 cannon, was surrounded by thirty thousand Russians with six hundred cannon. By late November 1790 no progress had been made, and the three Russian generals commanding the army were preparing to withdraw. Worried, Potemkin sent for Suvorov, giving him the freedom to launch an assault or abandon the siege, as he thought best. “Hurry up, my dear friend,” he wrote. “My only hope is in God and your valor. There are too many generals there equal in rank and the result is a kind of indecisive parliament.” Suvorov arrived on December 2, resited the Russian artillery, began a punishing bombardment, and informed Potemkin that he would begin the assault within five days. He called on the Turks to surrender, warning, “If Izmail resists, no one will be spared.” The Turkish commander spurned the demand. The Russian assault began at dawn. The Turks fought on the ramparts, at the gates, and in every street and house. They were overwhelmed by the fury of the Russian attack. Then, as he had promised the army before the assault, Suvorov unleashed his men for three days of looting.
During the years 1788–90, Russia was fighting two wars, in the north as well as the south. In June 1788, Gustavus III, king of Sweden, seeing an opportunity to recover the lands lost to Peter the Great in the early century, succumbed to the temptation offered by the concentration of the Russian army in the south. His objectives were to retake Finland and strip away Russia’s Baltic provinces; if he failed to do this, he melodramatically promised to follow the path of Queen Christina a century before, renounce the throne, convert to Catholicism, and move to Rome. On July 1, 1788, Catherine received his ultimatum, which went beyond demanding the return of all former Swedish territories on the Baltic. He now also insisted that the empress accept Swedish mediation in the Russo-Turkish war and restore to Turkey the Crimea and all other Ottoman territory won since 1768. A final insult in this provocative document referred to the “aid” he had given Russia by not attacking the empress during her first Turkish war and during the Pugachev rebellion. In Stockholm, Gustavus boasted that he would soon be breakfasting in Peterhof, and then go on to St. Peterburg, where he would tear down a statue of Peter the Great and replace it with one of himself. Catherine categorized the ultimatum as “this insane note,” which she had received from “Sir John Falstaff.” To Potemkin, she described the king as donning “breastplate, thigh pieces, armlets and a helmet with an enormous number of plumes.… What have I done that God should choose to chastise me with such a feeble instrument as the king of Sweden?”
In July 1789, Gustavus invaded Finland and sent his fleet up the Gulf of Finland; his army failed on land and his navy was only partially successful at sea. In the end, the war was inconclusive, the more so for Sweden, because Catherine, fully engaged against Turkey, had only to maintain the status quo in the Baltic in order to succeed. In the summer of 1790, Gustavus asked for peace. The Swedish-Russian peace agreement of August 3 left all frontiers exactly where they had been before the king had posted his “insane note.” Catherine was relieved. Writing to Potemkin, who was still fighting the Turks, she said, “We have pulled one paw out of the mud [in the Baltic]. As soon as we pull out the other [in the south], we’ll sing alleluia.”
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