The Charter stated that the King had *737 promulgated it “voluntarily, and by the free exercise of our royal authority . . . .”108 Many European constitutions of the nineteenth century were edicts of reigning monarchs and, whatever the actual circumstances of their creation, were formally expressions of their wills. When the King of Sardinia-Piedmont, with an eye on the revolutions of 1848, agreed to a constitution, he made sure to enact it “heeding only of the impulses of our heart . . . . by our certain Royal authority.”1