Bibescu approved the contract, but the Public Assembly protested against it: the deputies saw it as an intervention of the protecting power in local politics. The contract was eventually cancelled, but, caught between the Assembly's position and the Russian authorities, on March 4, 1844, Bibescu dissolved the Public Assembly with the approval of Russian Emperor Nicholas I. When elections for the body were convened in November 1846, he used several means to silence opposition, thus awarding himself a subservient legislature. A clear separation between him and Romantic nationalists occurred when he ordered the refoundation of the Saint Sava College as a French-language school — based on his view that Romanian was incompatible with modernization.