No military park would be complete without the cannons. CCNMP has over 200 of them throughout the park. One of my learning points was that these guns were hand-placed by the veterans of the battle a couple of decades after the war. The carriages, for the most part, are replicas. But, the guns themselves are authentic.
There were two types of guns used during this period. Smooth-bore and rifled. The smooth bore was less accurate and had less range. The rifled gun put a spin on the projectile making it much more accurate and giving it a greater range.
Example of a rifled gun. The rifling components are called, for obvious reasons, "grooves" and "lans"
Example of a smooth bore. When enemy troops would get into close quarter range, they would load the guns with "grape shot", making the piece a giant shotgun. When they ran out of grape shot, they would load with rocks, sticks, and pretty much anything they could get their hands on that would fit down the barrel.
Also used during this period were solid shot and shells. The shell explodes over the enemy troops sending hundreds of pieces of shrapnel in all directions. Solid shot was like shooting an iron bowling ball into the enemy lines. Most times solid shot was not very effective because the troops could see them coming and step aside. However, they still produced their fair share of casualties on those that were paying attention. This is the effect of solid shot on a 6-pounder Napoleon.
Originally posted by jnguyen 
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