By the second half of the 1860s, Napoleon III was beginning to face increasing opposition to his dictatorship from the growing economic and financial power of the middle classes. He was forced into granting a series of reforms that inaugurated the final phase of his rule, the so-called Liberal Empire. His foreign adventures, outside Europe as well as within, had proved extremely costly, and further expense was incurred by military reforms approved in the Army Law of 1868. His public works required massive loans for which the retrospective approval of the legislature was required.
