which Haussmann argued they were. This made the voucher scheme illegal, since the City of Paris had not obtained the permission of the Legislative Assembly before borrowing. The City was forced to enter into renegotiations with the Crédit Foncier to convert the vouchers into regular debt. Two separate agreements were made with the Crédit Foncier; the city agreed to repay 465 million francs in total over 40 years and 39 years respectively. The debates in the Legislative Assembly surrounding the authorization of these new agreements lasted 11 sessions, with critics attacking Haussmann's borrowing, his questionable funding mechanisms, and the City of Paris's governing structure. The result was a new law, passed on April 18, 1868, which gave the Legislative Assembly oversight of the city's finances. In the parliamentary elections of May 1869, the government candidates won 4.43 million votes, while the opposition republicans won 3.35 million votes. In Paris, the republican candidates won 234,000 votes to 77,000 for the Bonapartist candidates, and took eight of the nine seats of Paris deputies. At the same time Napoleon III was increasingly ill, suffering from gallstones which were to cause his death in 1873, and preoccupied by the political crisis that would lead to the Franco-Prussian War. In December 1869 Napoleon III named an opposition leader and fierce critic of Haussmann, Emile Ollivier, as his new prime minister. Napoleon gave in to the opposition demands in January 1870 and asked Haussmann to resign. Haussmann refused to resign, and the Emperor reluctantly dismissed him on 5 January 1870. Eight months later, during the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III was captured by the Germans, and the Empire was overthrown. In his memoirs, written many years later, Haussmann had this comment on his dismissal: "In the eyes of the Parisians, who like routine in things but are changeable when it comes to people, I committed two great wrongs: Over the course of seventeen years, I disturbed their daily habits by turning Paris upside down, and they had to look at the same face of the Prefect in the Hotel de Ville. These were two unforgivable complaints." Haussmann's successor as prefect of the Seine appointed Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, the head of Haussmann's department of parks and plantations, as the director of works of Paris. Alphand respected the basic concepts of his plan. Despite their intense criticism of Napoleon III and Haussmann during the Second Empire, the leaders of