Cannon were constructed with two or more barrels; some were arranged for being loaded in the breech, and others at the mouth of the piece; two pieces were sometimes connected by horizontal timbers, which revolved about a vertical axis, so that the recoil of one piece would bring the other into battery; and various other arrangements of this description, which have recently been revived and some of them patented as new inventions.

The small arms employed at this period were much the same as those used at the present day, except the matchlock, which afterwards gave place to flint-locks.

Arms of this description were sometimes made to be loaded at the breach, and guns with two, three, and even as many as eight barrels, were at one time in fashion.
In the _Musee de l'Artillerie_ at Paris may be found many arms of this kind, which have been reproduced in this country and England as new inventions.

In this Museum are two ancient pieces, invented near the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, which very nearly correspond with _Colt's patent_, with the single exception of the lock![33] [Footnote 33: It is not to be inferred that the modern _improvements_ (as they are called) are copied from the more ancient _inventions_.

Two men of different ages, or even of the same age, sometimes fall upon the same identical discovery, without either's borrowing from the other.] The _materiel_ of artillery employed in modern warfare is divided into two general classes: 1st.