Napoleon III of France

Napoleon III, born Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–1873) was the first President of the Second French Republic and the only emperor of the Second French Empire. He ruled as Emperor of the French until September 1870, when he was captured in the Franco-Prussian War. He holds the unusual distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France.

He was the great-nephew of legendary French general and monarch Napoleon.

Napoleon III in Southern Victory
Napoleon III installed Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico in the 1860s, a move opposed by the United States under the Monroe Doctrine. His government was hostile to the United States, and in late 1862, during the War of Secession, despite opposition to slavery, Napoleon III extended diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States and supported British military protection over that country, thus beginning an alliance between France and the CS that would continue through the Second Great War over eighty years later. This eventually turned out to have been a major strategic blunder for which France paid a heavy price, since it threw the United States into the arms of Imperial Germany. in a rival alliance which proved triumphed in both the Great War and the Second Great War.

Ultimately, Napoleon was forced to abdicate in 1870 during the disastrous Franco-Prussian War.