Paris under Napoleon Each of the twelve arrondissements had its own mayor, but their power was limited to enforcing the decrees of Napoleon's ministers. After he crowned himself Emperor on December 2, 1804, Napoleon began a series of projects to make Paris into an imperial capital to rival ancient Rome. He built monuments to French military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the column in Place Vendôme, and the future church of the Madeleine, intended as a temple to military heroes; and began the Arc de Triomphe. To improve the circulation of traffic in central Paris, he built a wide new
Napoleon III the Emperor. As Cavour had hoped, she caught his eye and became his mistress. Between 1855 and 1857, she used the opportunity to pass messages and to plead the Italian cause. In July 1858, Napoleon arranged a secret visit by Count Cavour. They agreed to join forces and drive the Austrians from Italy. In exchange, Napoleon III asked for Savoy (the ancestral land of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia) and the then bilingual county of Nice, which had been taken from France after Napoleon's fall in 1815 and given to Piedmont-Sardinia. Cavour protested that Nice was Italian, but Napoleon responded that