Napoleon III (born Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852, and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 until he was deposed in absentia on 4 September 1870. A nephew of Napoleon I and cousin of the disputed Napoleon II, he was the first person elected to the presidency of the Second Republic in 1848, and he seized power by force in 1851 when he could not constitutionally be reelected. He later proclaimed himself Emperor of the French and founded the Second Empire, reigning until the defeat of the French Army and his capture by Prussia and its allies at the Battle of Sedan in 1870. Napoleon III was a popular monarch who oversaw the modernization of the French economy and filled Paris with new boulevards and parks. He expanded the French overseas empire, made the French merchant navy the second largest in the world, and personally engaged in two wars. Maintaining leadership for 22 years, he was the longest-reigning leader of France since the fall of the Ancien Régime, although his reign would ultimately end on the battlefield.