Napoleon's Brick Guard and Army

  As I wanted my voitures - pièces ("piece-carts", i.e. the vehicle made of a limber and the cannon it's towing) to be able to carry "real" ammunition capable of being fired by the toy cannon rather than making a maybe more period-looking and scale-accurate smaller ammunition crate  - possibly carried on top of the gun as it was in the Gribeauval system - but unable to contain the one-by-one circular projectile bricks, the arrangement of limber, cannon and ammunition crate I ended up with is quite similar to what an An XI voiture-pièce would've looked like. The An XI system of artillery was devised by the French and slowly implemented (not with a resounding degree of success) starting in 1803 (or An XI / year eleven, according to the revolutionary calendar). The aim of the new system was to improve on the Gribeauval system of artillery (inherited by Napoleon from the Ancien Régime) and remedy some of its flaws. One thing that was done was to have the small...

  I've read somewhere that Napoleon's horse artillery had used an ammunition wagon shorter and lighter than the classic Gribeauval ammunition wagon. Supposedly, this smaller wagon had no spare wheel at the rear and no additional chest or tool box at the front to keep the vehicle as light as possible. I don't know if such vehicles were ever used by the French line (i.e. regular army) or Guard horse artillery, and if so if they were widespread but the principle seems to make sense. As the horse artillery, whose gunners were mounted on horses and whose guns were no heavier than the relatively light 8-pounder, was able to deploy more quickly and was nimbler than the foot artillery, it's logical that they could've wished for lighter ammunition wagons able to follow the horse artillery's movements as closely as possible so that the guns could be loaded and used without having to wait for the longer and bulkier wagons to arrive.  It's worth reminding though that th...