The Frankfurt Parliament was a revolutionary government which, from 18 May 1848 to 31 May 1849, served as the first freely-elected parliament for all German states, amid the Revolutions of 1848. The rise of liberal nationalism in Germany in reaction to a revolutionary wave across Europe resulted in protest rallies and risings from Baden and Bavaria to Saxony and Wurttemberg, and revolutionaries in the states of the German Confederation held elections to a "National Assembly" which purported to serve as the legislature of a "German Empire". 85% of the male population of Germany were able to vote, and they elected 586 deputies (including 94 professors, 30 teachers, and 233 university-educated deputies) to draft a constitution for the German nation. 400 of these delegates organized themselves into the conservative Cafe Milani faction (40 delegates, 10%), the liberal-conservative Casino faction (120, 30%), the centrist Landsberg faction (40, 10%), the center-left Wurttemberger Hof faction (100, 25%), the democratic Deutscher Hof faction (60, 15%), and the far-left Donnersberg faction (40, 10%). The Constitution, produced on 28 May 1849, proclaimed a German Empire based on the principles of parliamentary democracy, with basic rights for its citizens under a constitutional monarchy. However, the German states gradually rejected the constitution, with Prussia refusing to take the leadership of the Empire without the consent of the other German states, and other states arguing that an understanding with Austria should be reached first. By 1850, when Prussia formally abandoned its proposal to alter Germany's political composition, the German states had suppressed their constitutions, popularly-elected parliaments, and democratic clubs.