To increase the rate of artillery fire, inventors attempted to multiply the number of barrels in an artillery system. Naturally this was not suitable for large-calibre cannon due to their excessive weight, but smaller cannon loaded with grapeshot profited from this development. This is how the predecessor of the modern machine-gun was developed. The new weapon was of limited use. It was effective against tight enemy infantry or cavalry formations. However, multi-barrelled cannon had only a short range of fire, were very heavy and extremely difficult to manufacture, therefore they were soon out of use.
