Isaac acquired the conservative newspaper La Liberté from Émile de Girardin, and heavily influenced its editorial line in the later 1870s. Downfall In the mid-1860s, the Pereires' alliances in the haute finance began to fray. Their attempt to challenge the issue monopoly of the Banque de France through the restructuring of the , the note-issuing bank of the former Duchy of Savoy which had come under French rule following the Treaty of Turin (1860), was resented by the Pereires' former associate . In 1866–7, the Pereire group underwent a severe crisis largely triggered by the burden of their developments in Marseille. The Pereires were forced to relinquished control of the Crédit Mobilier on 14 September 1867, at the demand of the Banque de France. Even so, they kept some of their wealth and properties, but had to face numerous lawsuits in the ensuing years and in 1872 were compelled to sell their art collections. In any case, the Pereires' heyday came to an end with the demise of the Second Empire, with which they had been deeply associated. One of the Second Empire's key political protagonists, Persigny, would thus write in his memoirs: Family properties In 1852 the Pereires bought a vast estate in Gretz-Armainvilliers and commissioned their favorite architect to build a palatial country house there in the early 1860s, the Château d'Armaivilliers, to rival the Rothschilds' nearby Château de Ferrières; it was bombed by mistake by the US Air Force in 1944 and demolished in 1950. In 1854 they purchased the hôtel particulier on 15 Place Vendôme to make it the headquarters of the Crédit Mobilier, and kept it as such until 1867. The same building was transformed into a luxury hotel in 1898 by César Ritz and is now the Hôtel Ritz Paris. In 1855 they acquired their urban mansion, the Hotel Pereire on 35-37 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, initially built in 1713, and had it extensively renovated until 1859, also by Armand. That property was purchased by the British government in 1947 and is now the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Paris. Their villa in Arcachon, built in 1863–1854 in their real estate development there, was demolished in 1959. Legacy The Pereires were active in real estate development and created some of the most iconic urban landscapes of the era. These included the Gare Saint-Lazare, first opened in 1842 as one of the main railway