 He founded the Second French Empire and was its only Emperor until the defeat of the French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.He worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the French overseas empire, and engaged in the Crimean War and the Second Italian War of Independence.Napoleon III commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, and launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and other French cities.