In September Marshal Soult informed the emperor of the army's wish to erect such a column and for its site the town of Boulogne bought the estate of the old royalist, the widow Delahodde-Fourcroy, who reluctantly ceded her field for a monument to the man she called "the usurper".

Brard (1808) of the marbles of the Département of the Pas-de-Calais includes the following quotation: In the 1808 edition he adds that Monsieur Piron then After the invasion force became the Grande Armée on 16 August 1804 and left Boulogne, work on the column became slow and erratic.

After the regime change of the July Revolution, in 1831 the column was voted 10,000 francs for maintenance, the crown was removed and the fleurs de lys replaced by stars.

In a failed coup of 1840 Louis-Napoleon landed a small body of his supporters at Boulogne, and ended up taking refuge in the park around the column and raising the imperial flag atop it, before fleeing to the beach, where he was arrested.

It arrived at the Column amidst great celebration on 26 July - old soldiers were seen to weep and touch the statue's hands - and placed on its top by the future Napoleon III on 15 August in the presence of 50,000 people, with a special medallion being cast for the occasion (though the bas-reliefs were not added until 1843).

[4] Punch on 28 August 1841 noted that the new statue had "been turned, by design or accident, with its back to England" and commented:[5] Napoleon III and his empress arrived at Boulogne on 27 September 1853 and he immediately gave orders to build an avenue leading up to the column (though this was demolished in the 1970s).