Travelled in Europe a bit this summer. The Doge's palace armoury in Venice had a quite interesting collection. I've linked some pictures I took.
Included are arquebuses, sword-guns, sword axes, dual-cock flintlock rifles and multi-barrelled black-powder firearms.
Sort of curious how commonly and effective weapons like this were, and how widespread was there use.
I'd be interested in any background that could be provided to these sorts of weapons.
EDIT:
huh, apparently the multi-barrel weapons are called "pepper-box" pistols or rifles. Some details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper-box
They were pretty common as an exhibition of a weaponsmith's skill. Many are given highly decorative treatments, which shows that they were designed as showpieces or were expensive novelties for the wealthy. Like other artful objects, they are present in many museum collections around the world, but are much less common among the simple practical weapons of the common soldier.
It's difficult to say how useful they were. On the face of it, they would seem to be not very good at either function - extra weight for a sword to swing around, and dangerous sharp edges to hold onto when aiming the gun. But the idea simply refused to die, so maybe there was something to it. Lord Nelson had one made in 1805, for instance. And here's a crazy one from the 1940s.
Edit: a friend of Lord Nelson anyway, provenance cannot be definitively traced to Nelson himself.