The Eastern European Chessboard

Potemkin tore the hot towel from his head and immediately broke into a violent coughing fit.

He had contracted a severe fever in Iasi and had recently stopped handling official affairs personally for the most part. Yet now, he forced himself to the table and picked up a quill with a trembling hand.

As Russia's de facto Chancellor and Minister of Defense, he saw at a glance what Stanisław II was trying to do.

Over the past two years, Poland had been consolidating the country, gradually straightening out its previously tangled ethnic conflicts and political factions. A few months earlier, it had promulgated a Constitution, further strengthening its national power.

If Poland were allowed to keep developing, then in no more than five years, Russia would find Poland a bone too hard to chew.

That was why, beginning more than half a year ago, he had started mobilizing troops and preparing to launch a war against Poland.

Yet at this very moment, the King of Poland was urging the Tsar to wage war against the Ottoman to the south, with Poland even offering to send troops in support.

If the Tsar truly agreed, Russia's military focus would remain fixed on the Balkan Peninsula for a long time.

At the same time, Poland, having fought shoulder to shoulder with Russia as an "ally," would make it harder for Russia to find an excuse to move against it later.

This would severely disrupt Russia's strategic arrangements.

Of course, Stanisław II was not remotely capable of such political scheming. Zubov, who knew Russia's strategic plans inside out, had fabricated the whole thing.

And for Potemkin, beyond matters of state, he personally loathed Stanisław II as well.

Though he had not "attended" Catherine II's bedchamber for a long time, he remained the one in