The Vendôme Column was started in 1806 at Napoleon’s direction and completed in 1810. It was modelled after Trajan’s Column, to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz; its veneer of 425 spiralling bas-relief bronze plates was made out of cannon taken from the combined armies of Europe, according to his propaganda. A statue of Napoleon, bare-headed, crowned with laurels and holding a sword in his right hand and a globe surmounted with a statue of Victory in his left hand, was placed atop the column.
During the Paris Commune in 1871, the painter Gustave Courbet, president of the Federation of Artists and elected member of the Commune,[4] who had previously expressed his dismay that this monument to war was located on the Rue de la Paix, proposed that the column be disassembled and preserved at the Hôtel des Invalides.
His project as proposed was not adopted, though on 12 April 1871 legislation was passed authorizing the dismantling of the imperial symbol. When the column was taken down on 16 May its bronze plates were preserved. After the suppression of the Paris Commune, the decision was made to rebuild the column with the statue of Napoléon restored at its apex.