to accept this choice, but if Frederick William refused, Römer advised William he had a good chance of being elected emperor himself. This flattery increased, however, only the mistrust of William against Römer. On 20 April 1849 the Chamber of Deputies voted in the Landtag with only two dissenting votes in favour of recognising the constitution drafted by the Frankfurt Parliament on 28 March 1849. William refused to do so and justified his refusal in a supplement to the Schwäbischer Merkur (Swabian Mercury) with a circulation of 12,000 copies. Given the tricky situation of Stuttgart, he moved his court to the garrison city of Ludwigsburg. On 25 April, William decided to accept the constitution. But he felt it was imposed humiliation, which was multiplied when he realized that he was the only ruler of a larger German state who had accepted the Constitution. After the Frankfurt Parliament had failed with the rejection of the German imperial crown by Frederick William of Prussia, on 30 May 1849 the remaining members decided to relocate the parliament to Stuttgart. Derisively known as the Rumpfparlament ("rump parliament"), on 6 June 1849, the remaining 154 deputies met initially under President Wilhelm Loewe in Stuttgart. Following its view of itself as the legitimate German parliament, the rump parliament called for tax resistance and military resistance against those states that did not accept the Paulskirche Constitution. Since this view also diminished the autonomy of Württemberg, and the Prussian army was successfully crushing the rebellions in the nearby Baden and the Palatinate, the Württemberg government rapidly distanced itself from the rump parliament. On 17 June the president of the parliament was informed that the Württemberg government was no longer in a position to tolerate the meetings that had moved to its territory, nor the activities of the regency elected on the 6th, anywhere in Stuttgart or Württemberg. At this point, the rump parliament had only 99 deputies and did not reach a quorum according to its own rules. On 18 June the Württemberg army occupied the parliamentary chamber before the session started. The deputies reacted by organising an impromptu protest march which was promptly squashed by the soldiers without bloodshed. Those deputies that were not from Württemberg were expelled. On 2 July William returned to Stuttgart. In August 1849 elections were held for a Constituent Assembly in which the democrats reached the majority against the moderate liberals. While