Musketeers began to take cover behind walls or in sunken lanes and sometimes acted as skirmishers to take advantage of their ranged weapons. The musketeers were the first infantry to give up armour entirely. However, at this point, long-barreled, musket-caliber weapons had been in use as wall-defence weapons in Europe for almost a century. During the siege of Parma in 1521, many Spanish soldiers reportedly used an "arquebus with rest", a weapon much larger and more powerful than the regular arquebus. Armour that was 2 mm thick required nearly three times as much energy to penetrate as armour that was only 1 mm thick. In response to firearms, thicker armor was produced, from 15 kg in the 15th century to 25 kg in the late 16th century. The heavy arquebus known as the musket appeared in Europe by 1521. The differences between the arquebus and musket post-16th century are therefore not entirely clear, and the two have been used interchangeably on several occasions. This version of the musket fell out of use after the mid-16th century with the decline of heavy armor however, the term itself stuck around as a general descriptor for 'shoulder arms' fireweapons into the 19th century. Evidence of the musket as a type of firearm does not appear until 1521 when it was used to describe a heavy arquebus capable of penetrating heavy armor. The first recorded usage of the term "musket" or moschetto appeared in Europe in the year 1499.
The Italian moschetto is a diminutive of mosca, a fly. An alternative theory is that derives from the 16th century French mousquet, -ette, from the Italian moschetto, -etta, meaning the bolt of a crossbow. According to the Etymology Dictionary, firearms were often named after animals, and the word musket derived from the French word mousquette, which is a male sparrowhawk.
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