Šćepan appeared publicly very little for a year, but his authority was again strengthened in the autumn of 1772. After a series of failed negotiations, war broke out once more between the Ottomans and Russia. Russia again became interested in Montenegro as the sole independent bastion of Orthodoxy in the Balkans. In October, a Montenegrin priest serving the Russians as a sergeant major in the Russian army, Savić Barjanović, arrived in Montenegro and confirmed Russia's belief in Šćepan's leadership and called on the country's people to obey and follow their ruler. Šćepan called a meeting of Montenegrin nobles and people and began taking measures to strengthen his government. Throughout his brief reign, Šćepan called such assemblies twenty-five times. Through these meetings, Šćepan succeeded in making the clans of Montenegro realise their common needs. A total of ninety death sentences to end vendettas are recorded to have been passed by him, alongside the same number of death sentences to punish pillaging. The death penalty had not existed in Montenegro before Šćepan introduced it. To oversee justice, he established a "Court of Twelve" composed of respected clan leaders tasked with touring Montenegro's districts and dealing justice. He even co-operated with his rival, Prince-Bishop Sava, in punishing monks who conspired to reorganise the local church. Šćepan successfully made peace with Venice and succeeded in keeping that peace through brutally punishing those Montenegrins who plundered Venetian lands.