Le prime armi leggere, chiamate cannoni a mano, o schioppi, si svilupparono sul modello di precedenti armi da artiglieria; poco pratiche, pesanti e soprattutto lente e imprecise, si andarono via via perfezionando, diventando in pochi decenni determinanti per l'esito delle battaglie.


The first small arms were developed as miniature models of early artillery weapons and were at first called hand cannons.

A "schioppo" was a very primitive firearm that was charged with powder and a ball (or sometimes with a sort of arrow called "verrettone") from the mouth, and had no firing mechanism (it was fired by means of a thin red hot piece of iron, and later of a lighted fuse, or sponge). A "schioppetto" was the hand-held version of the weapon. At the beginning of XVI century, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, in a treatise on Military architecture, says that a schioppetto has a lenght of 68-101 cm and fires a lead ball 13-15 mm in diameter (I gathered that the figures were translated in modern terms by a scholar in the 1840's).

The later harquebus (archibugio) saw an important improvement because the explosion of the powder was triggered by a mechanical device - of several different kinds, culminating in the use of a flintstone.

This (that I gathered in a hasty but not unpleasant perusal of the Enciclopedia Treccani) may be a step forward but still leaves the asker with a couple difficult problems - for which I have no serius help to offer:

1) blunderbass (that I proposed but tentatively) is defined in my Oxfor Concise as a large bore weapon, usually charged with several balls at once - I think that the nearest equivalent in Italian would be a "trombone" - the one still used by the southern brigands to fight against the Italian state in the late XIX century. Thus, it doesn't seem satisfying - neither is, obviosly, harquebus.

2) the identification of "schiopito" with "schioppettto" is far from certain (though probable). Unless a drawing or photograph is available, I'd say that one should at least try to learn something about place and time - even so, I fear it would still be a lot of work.

if this is something like a *schioppo*, *musket* should do

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/reserves/cd189/text/act01_...
Long moustaches, knapsack tightly on,
musket on your shoulder, sabre at your side

Gran mustacchi, stretto sacco,
schioppo in spalla, sciabola al fianco

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Note added at 2 hrs 11 mins (2005-09-18 19:54:51 GMT)
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apparently a *moschetto* is a kind of *schioppo*

http://digilander.libero.it/tsnpordenone/ARglossario.htm

Moschetto: nome dato verso la fine del '400 al più grosso e potente degli schioppi portatili, simile alla cerbottana da cui deriva e, come questa, bisognevole di una forcella di appoggio durante lo sparo.



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Note added at 19 hrs 25 mins (2005-09-19 13:09:04 GMT)
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Of course Alfredo is right that historical context is crucial here