maintained the longstanding duty-free relationship of northern Savoyard communes to Geneva. The treaty was followed on 22–23 April by a plebiscite employing universal male suffrage, in which voters were offered the option of voting "yes" to approve the treaty and join France or rejecting the treaty with a no vote. The disallowed options of either joining Switzerland, remaining with Italy, or regaining its independence, were the source of some opposition. With a 99.8% vote in favour of joining France, there were allegations of vote-rigging, notably by the British government, which opposed continental expansion by its traditional French enemy. The correspondent of The Times in Savoy who was in Bonneville on 22 April called the vote "the lowest and most immoral farce(s) which was ever played in the history of nations". He finished his letter with those words: I leave you to draw your own conclusions from this trip, which will show clearly what the vote was in this part of Savoy. The vote was the bitterest irony ever made on popular suffrage. The ballot-box in the hands of those very authorities who issued the proclamations; no control possible; even travellers suspected and dogged lest they should pry into the matter; all opposition put down by intimidation, and all liberty of action completely taken away. One can really scarcely reproach the Opposition with having given up the game; there was too great force used against them. As for the result of the vote, therefore, no one need trouble himself about it; it will be just as brilliant as that in Nice. The only danger is lest the Savoy authorities in their zeal should fare as some of the French did in the vote of 1852, finding to their surprise rather more votes than voters inscribed on the list. In his letter to the ambassador of Vienna Lord Augustus Loftus, the then–Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, said, "Voting in Savoy and Nice a farce ... we are neither entertained or edified". The annexation was promulgated on 14 June 1860. On 23 August 1860 and 7 March 1861, two agreements were signed between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia to settle the remaining issues concerning the annexation. This was part of a secret agreement (the Plombières Agreement) brokered between the French emperor Napoleon III and the Count Camillo of Cavour (Prime Minister of Sardinia at that time) that allowed the