Just from looking at the Wikipedia page, it sounds like it’d make a great high-school-level essay: “If Napoleon III had died peacefully in 1869 he’d be considered a success”
responsible for a lot of modernization in France
colonization: conquests in Asia, held on to North Africa, maintained interests in China (all of which the Europeans considered good things)
one of the key people in Europe: part of the Crimean War alliance (which included England!), responsible for helping unify northern Italy by defeating Austria, “defender of Catholicism”
the Mexico expedition was a disaster, but it was failed expansion and didn’t end in France itself getting invaded (which several of Napoleon I’s disasters did)
if the war of 1870 had never happened, it would have been one of the great “what ifs” of history. Prussia spent half a century of militarization because of its defeat by Napoleon I, and by the end of the century would have arguably the best land army in the world. We now know how a France-Prussia war turned out, but in 1869 that was not obvious. Even if an alternate-history Prussia had defeated France, we would have hypothesized that maybe if Napoleon III had been there he would have made the difference
DISCLAIMER: he overthrew his own Republic and let himself be pulled into a war he wasn’t ready for, so he was in fact a pretty horrible guy, just saying that there’s an argument that he’s not as clownish as he’s sometimes portrayed
Just from looking at the Wikipedia page, it sounds like it’d make a great high-school-level essay: “If Napoleon III had died peacefully in 1869 he’d be considered a success”