Okay – reluctant to enter into these lists – but as its TWW and all friendly like
– a quick thought:
The only one I could think of was in Nosworthy’s ‘Battle Tactics of Napoleon and his Enemies’ where he quotes de la Pierre in ‘Simples Elements d’art Militaire’ commenting on Jena where a French battery found itself at 600 metres from a Prussian 12lber battery in canister range (p.396 in Nosworthy, p.78 in de la Pierre) . Serruzier the officer in charge of the French 4lb battery apparently ordered half his guns to fire and make lots of smoke while the other half advanced even closer and took the Prussians unawares, destroying them.
It appears that if they were firing canister the Prussians didn’t do a lot of damage – reading the story it makes much of the fact the Prussians couldn’t see the half battery move and were firing blind at an incorrect range – would that make a lot of difference if the canister had a good spread? (maybe it didn’t – see Griffith!) so maybe they were firing roundshot.
If you read de la Pierre it is not clear that the Prussians ever actually fired canister or indeed what the advanced French 4lb ers fired. Just to add fuel to the grape/canister translation row elsewhere – Nosworthy confidently says ‘canister range’ while de la Pierre actually says that at that range ‘le douze pouvant faire usage de mitraille’ – so they were able to use – you tell me what mitraille translates as in 1847 (the date of dlP’s publication)
I can find ‘grape’ or ‘canister’. (or machine gun in a later dictionary) but he doesn’t actually say they did fire it, whatever it was.
A bit of heretical thinking – does any of it make much difference in wargame terms? I suppose if you are using the Grant canister cone you may need to rethink the shape a bit – but at a higher level of resolution (and abstraction) I doubt the distinction makes a difference in game terms.