One of the great tragicomedies of the nineteenth century, the attempt by Napoleon III to establish Archduke Maximilian of Austria as the emperor of Mexico. Biographer Jasper Ridley provides a colorful narrative of this ill-starred undertaking, which pitted liberals against conservatives and the New World against the Old, and ended with the execution of Maximilian, the insanity of his wife, Charlotte, and the emergence of the United States as a world power.--From publisher description.