An early example of this is at Austerlitz in 1805, when Napoleon ordered a "roar of thunder" before the main assault upon the Pratzen Heights, which split the coalition's lines in half.
The same tactic was used during the Battle of Wagram in 1809, where a grand battery of 112 guns successfully halted an Austrian counterattack.
At the Battle of Lützen (1813), it succeeded in breaking the Russo-Prussian center, ahead of the main assault by the Imperial guard.
In 1815 at Waterloo, the famous opening barrage of the Grande Batterie failed to break the center of Wellington's Anglo-allied army due to his deployment of most of his forces behind the reverse slopes of the rolling hillside and the fact that the ground was still wet and muddy, preventing the usual effects of the bouncing cannonballs.
In 1863 on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee, formed a Grand Battery of his own in a desperate attempt to weaken the Union center in advance of Pickett's Charge.