Like the apparant lack of instruction how to make a musket pyramid.
Did French regiments of the First Empire ever carry musket racks with their baggage on maneuvers or campaign? I ask because in Russian, "pyramid" can refer to either an impromptu stack of weapons like you're referring to, or to an actual built piece of carpentry for the purpose of neatly storing weapons. The prescribed equipment tables of 1798 and 1802 allot each infantry company two such racks and the infantry regulations assign them a place in the regimental camp between the company's tents and their "place of arms" where they assemble in formation. Banners and drums could also be placed in rests but those were not provided for by the state. If the musket racks were not available, they would fall back on the improvised piled arms.
At formal guard posts in towns and garrisons, the positions of individual sentries even had their own musket rests (short wooden posts with a notch cut in the top). In fact, the regulations even call for these to be planted outside the tents of generals in the field and at key positions around a camp's exterior, but understandably it was ignored in practice.
Alright, thanks.
If you were curious what I meant by individual stands or rests for sentries, here are some illustrations:
Bluehawk if you are reading this, remember this talk we had?
I got new information that the French did indeed have stands similar to the Russian stands you showed us. However, this does not make the way of forming a "Pyramid" out of muskets wrong as it would surely have happened when not in an actual camp (more permanent camp) as evidenced by period drawing showing Musket "Pyramids".
Anyway it looks like at the end of the day, when there was a more permanent camp was to be formed, officers were to instruct some men to go to the woods, hack down some trees and make muskets stands.
Each stand was supposed to be large enough for one company, so each company would have its own stand, all next to each other like in the line of battle. They were supposed to have "roof" too, to protect the guns a little bit. Official orders say that the roof was to be made out of branches and straw, but the illustrations below shows wooden planks as roof.
Here are is a period illustration:
Now here is a period illustration I had for a long time, but I always thought that the guns are just stacked on themself. I always thought that the reason why it looks so strange and symetrical is just because the artist was lazy, but I now believe that it is indeed showing the musket racks/stands as described above and it is simply missing the roof.