The wreckage of the Vendôme Column fills the foreground of this albumen stereoview, one of the most arresting documents to survive from the Paris Commune of 1871. The series title "Insurrection de Paris," printed in red ink vertically along both sides of the yellow card mount, identifies the publisher as Q.V. (Jules Hippolyte Queval) of Paris. The column was toppled on May 16, 1871, and photographs taken in the days immediately following record the scene before the Versaillais reclaimed the city.

A group of men in dark military-style tunics and kepis poses among the massive curved fragments of the fallen shaft, its spiraling bronze relief panels visible in cross-section. One figure sits squarely in the foreground on a stone block, arms resting on his knees, while several others stand behind the largest fragment. Haussmann-era façades of the Place Vendôme form the background, intact and unmarked.

The Vendôme Column had been erected in 1805 by Napoleon I to commemorate the victory at Austerlitz; standing 44.3 meters tall, it comprised 76 granite rings clad in 425 bronze sheets said to have been cast from 1,200 cannons seized from Russian and Austrian armies. Six days after it was toppled, the Assemblée de Versailles voted to rebuild it, and by 1873 an identical copy had been raised in its place.

The reverse bears a printed paper label reading "N. Insurrection de Paris. / Les débris de la Colonne Vendôme." ("The debris of the Vendôme Column.") A green ink stamp reading "H.J. Munson" appears below the label, with the numeral "75" in pencil at upper right and the catalog notation "LODE6B2 / 7/1+2/09" in pencil along the right edge.