On 26 May 1818, the constitution was proclaimed. The parliament was to consist of two houses; the first comprising the great hereditary landowners, government officials, and nominees of the crown; the second, elected on a very narrow franchise, comprising representatives of the small land-owners, the towns, and the peasants. By additional articles the equality of religions was guaranteed and the rights of Protestants safeguarded, concessions which were denounced at Rome as a breach of the Concordat, which had been signed immediately before. The result of the constitutional experiment hardly justified the royal expectations; the parliament was hardly opened (5 February 1819) before the doctrinaire radicalism of some of its members, culminating in the demand that the army should swear allegiance to the constitution, so alarmed the king that he appealed to Austria and Germany, undertaking to carry out any repressive measures they might recommend. Prussia, however, refused to approve of any coup d'état; the parliament, chastened by the consciousness that its life depended on the goodwill of the king, moderated its tone; and Maximilian ruled till his death as a model constitutional monarch. On 13 October 1825, his son Ludwig I succeeded him.
