This is a biography of Napoleon III who ruled over 18 years of glittering success in France known as the Second Empire. Modern Paris was created out of its medieval slums - 47 acres of parkland became 5,000, the streets were redesigned by Hausmann into the grand boulevards we see today, and the dame of the fashion house of Worth became an international figure. But the stability was a facade. When Bismarck outmanoeuvred Napoleon in 1866 he brought an entire age to a close. The empire's costly and empty militarism was finally unsupportable. The economy had already had to support three major wars and could support no more. Perhaps the most ludicrous of these had been Eugenie's whim to place a European prince on the throne in Mexico - a plan doomed from its inception.