Going through some older photos and found this one I always meant to put in my Paris Gallery.

The original 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 (the usual figure given is hugely exaggerated: 180 cannon were actually captured at Austerlitz.
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 (as in Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker) in his left hand, was placed atop the column.
In 1816, taking advantage of the Allied occupying force, a mob of men and horses had attached a cable to the neck of the statue of Napoleon atop the column, but it had refused to budge – one woman quipped:
"If the Emperor is as solid on his throne as this statue is on its column, he's nowhere near descending the throne".
After the Bourbon Restoration the statue, though not the column, was pulled down and melted down to provide the bronze for the recast equestrian statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf.
A replacement statue of Napoléon in modern dress (a tricorn hat, boots and a redingote)was erected by Louis-Philippe, and a better, more augustly classicizing one by Louis-Napoléon (later Napoléon III).