Napoleon III dreams of building a French economic sphere in Latin America, centered on Mexico.

He helps to rapidly promote rapid economic modernization, but his army battles diehard insurgents who have American support.

By 1863, French military intervention in Mexico to set up a Second Mexican Empire headed by Emperor Maximilian, brother of Franz Joseph I of Austria, is a complete fiasco.

The Mexicans fight back and after defeating the Confederacy the U.S. will demand the French withdraw from Mexico—sending fifty thousand veteran combat troops to the border to ram the point home.

The French army will go home; the puppet emperor does not leave and will eventually be executed.