Those are good questions Tim, but I don't have the answers, which is why I’m now waiting on responses to a few emails that I sent to peolple knowledgeable about this form of writing.
Don’t misunderstand my earlier post, I’m in no way arguing that the judgement coming from the French forum is wrong, to the contrary, I'm convinced that the letters placed between the trunnions on both French howitzers ("Le Rapp" and "Le Belier" or The Ram) are
T’s, and that they do represent the surname initial of Guillaume
Tournaire who was in charge of the Douai Foundry in 1844 when they were both manufactured. In all probability it is also a T that's on the 24-inch French cannon model, in fact to my untrained eyes that letter more resembles a T than the others; but is there any possibility that it is a C?
When cannonmn first stated that some members of a French forum thought that what we believed to be a C was in actuality a T, I started searching the net for examples of script letters, and it didn’t take long to find examples of script T’s that were even better matches than the French forum provided. I also found some examples of uppercase C’s that were very similar in appearance, and observed other letters that seemed to be distinguished from each other only by the subtlest nuances of line, so I’m just trying to avoid wasting time looking for a word or name that’s incorrect, because the identification of the letter seen on the model is in error.
T 's
I realize this is a more modern font based on older script lettering, but the
C is still very similar to the letter found on the model.
Compare the uppercase I and J.