Volley gun
Two notable artillery-sized volley guns were developed in the mid-19th century, although neither was particularly successful in practice. Developed in the 1860s and based on an 1850s design by a captain Fafschamps, the French mitrailleuse is an example of a multi-barreled volley gun that could fire all of its barrels simultaneously or sequentially over a short period of time. Also developed in the 1860s, General Origen Vandenburgh of the New York State Militia designed a weapon that had eighty five parallel .50 caliber rifle barrels. After failing to sell the weapon to the United Kingdom, he reportedly sold a small number to the Confederate States of America, although there is no record that they were actually used. One Vandenburgh gun was located at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and another reportedly at Salisbury, NC.
Volley fire
By 1548 the Ming had started fielding arquebuses after procuring knowledge of the weapon from the pirate network at Shuangyu. The military leader Qi Jiguang, who was at first ambivalent towards matchlocks, became one of the primary advocates for their incorporation into the Ming army later on in his life. After having suffered his first defeats at the hands of the wokou, he realized the vital role of this new weapon in combating piracy, for it out ranged their heaviest arrows. By 1560 he had invented a style of musket warfare similar to the Tang crossbow volley technique which he described the same year in his magnum opus, the "Jixiao Xinshu":