About Those Napoleons (Cannons)-- Part 1: "Nothing Mortal Can Bear a Battery of Six Light Napoleon Guns"

From the Fall 2016 Civil War Monitor Magazine.

"There was one [Confederate] regiment that stood up before the fire of two or three of our long-range batteries and two regiments of infantry, and though the air around them was vocal with the whistle of bullets and screams of shells, there they stood, and delivered their fire in perfect order," wrote Inion Army surgeon Thomas Ellis in his diary about the Battle of Antietam in September 1862.

"[T]here they continued to stand until a battery of six light twelves were brought to bear on them, and before that they broke.  Nothing mortal can bear a battery of six light Napoleon guns...."

He was talking about the Model 1857 12-pounder field gun popularly known as "Napoleons."

A Mean Little Stinker.  --Old SecDuckandCover