Slitherine

In our last game the French decided to shoot at a routing artillery unit that had limbered up and broke while wavering from a charge, and their evade took them right across the Austrian line, effectively blocking any shooting by the French at the troops who were disordered or wavering behind them.
A quick search I could not find any mention about not shooting at routers so we let them blast away and they took 6 hits. The outcome moved forced them back through a steady unit of Cuirassier, who ignored them and managed to pass the CMT for being burst through. The routing artillery was at medium range for all French shooters.

Question: can you shoot at routers with the intention of trying to force an outcome move through troops behind? Also if your only close target is routers do you shoot at them?

Nothing in the rules I can see either away about this.
You fire at a "target", which is not defined as far as I can see.

I cannot think of any good reason why a routing unit cannot be a target, so fire away is my view.
If you get 4+ hits on the routers, they rout again.

Cheers
Brett

I would think historically it pretty likely that people would fire upon any enemy at that close proximity.

Well at least its nice to know we didnt miss an important section while checking the book.
Routers beware in our games from now on

Question: can you shoot at routers with the intention of trying to force an outcome move through troops behind? Also if your only close target is routers do you shoot at them?

No reason why not. They are a legitimate target, and you cannot shoot at anything else while they are in the way.
the won't cause a test on other units for being broken a 2nd time, but as you've found, they can cause a test by bursting through units.