I expect that the person who was wearing that armour at that time (Waterloo, you can see it written in the cuiras) didn't survived.
Btw, now you are talking about those "normal" gun bullets, something reminds me of that that hole wasn't made by a cannon, but by bullet, possibly, like you say, fired from close range. So you see what kind of impact it has. Also look below that cuiras, there you see some of the bullets. They aren't as big as you would expect them if you see that enormous hole.
I just looked it up in a book, because this cuiras is quite famous, it is even in one of my historical army books in french, it says:
On voit le trou cause par le boulet de petit calibre qui l'atteignit en pleine poitrine.
It says something like:
You can see the hole caused by a small caliber bullet which hit him in the full chest.
[This message has been edited by gorbag orc (edited 08-11-2005 @ 04:45 PM).]