Palatine Uprising

The Palatine uprising (German: Pfälzischer Aufstand or Pfälzer Aufstand), took place during the months of May and June 1849 in the Rhenish Palatinate, then an exclave territory of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Related to uprisings across the Rhine River in Baden, it was part of the widespread Imperial Constitution Campaign (Reichsverfassungskampagne). Revolutionaries worked to defend the Constitution as well as to secede from the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The movement of the March Revolution in the member states of the German Confederation had led to the election of the Frankfurt Assembly, the first all-German parliament. This parliament had enacted a Constitution of the German Empire on 28 March 1849; it established a hereditary constitutional monarchy. The Prussian king Frederick William IV refused to accept the imperial crown under this constitution.

In the Kingdom of Bavaria, the first parliamentary elections were to take place on 7 December 1848. The result was a majority in favour of the Left (die Linke), the so-called "Followers of Popular Sovereignty and the Unity of Germany". In the Palatinate, voters had elected Left representatives to all 19 seats. At the opening of parliament on 22 January 1849, King Maximilian promised further reforms. On 9 January, the majority of the parliament enacted a bill of rights, as proposed by the Frankfurt Assembly in December 1848. The king refused to recognize their act and adjourned the parliament on 8 March. On 23 April, the king and his government rejected the Frankfurt Constitution; on 14 April, the Bavarian Supreme Court rejected the validity of the Fundamental Rights document for Bavaria.

The Left regarded these actions as a coup d'etat. Palatine deputies returned to the municipalities with a resolution: it said that failure to recognize the constitution was "a criminal rebellion against the newly created legal order; and any use of force [would be] treason against the German Nation". The March societies in the Bavarian territories of the Palatinate, Franconia and Swabia demanded adoption of the constitution, abolition of the monarchy, and separation of the Palatinate and Franconia from the Kingdom of Bavaria.

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