Russia has occupied Moldavia and Wallachia for six years, during which Count Pavel Kiselev, a capable administrator, has improved health conditions, organized a well-disciplined police force, built up grain reserves, and overseen the drafting and ratification of the principalities' first fundamental laws, the Règlement Organique.

Russia uses these charters to co-opt Romanian boyars by protecting their privileges, including their tax-exempt status and oligarchic control of the government.

The charters, however flawed, give Romanians their first taste of government by law.

The Règlement provides for elected assemblies of boyars to choose each prince, reforms the principalities' judicial systems, and establishes public education.

At the same time, the documents' economic provisions enable the boyars to stiffen peasant obligations and reduce the peasants' freedom of mobility.