ARMISTICE, the term given to a truce or suspension of hostilities between two armies or nations at war, by mutual con sent. It sometimes occurs owing to the exhaustion of both parties; at other times it is had recourse to with a view to arrange terms of peace. It may be either general or partial; the former, be the body from wounds or to annoy the enemy. Hence it was divided into two kinds, defensive and offensive. A com plete suit of defensive armor anciently consisted of a casque or helm, a gorget, cuirass, gauntlets, tasses, brassets, cuishes and covers for the legs, to which the spurs were fastened. This was called armor cap-a-pie, and was worn by cavaliers and men-at-arms. The in. fantry had only part of it, viz., a pot or head-piece, a cuirass and tasses; all of them made light. The horses had ar mor which covered the head and neck.
Of all this equipment of war scarcely anything is now retained except, in a few cases, the cuirass. One of the few picturesque features of the World War was the revival of the use of armor in other protective devices of metal.
a locomotive with boiler plate and equipped cars, similarly protected, with field guns and put them to effective prac tical use. But the germ of the idea goes back further than 1882. When the Ger mans closed their vise-like grip upon Paris, the French made frequent sorties from the city, and in many of these at tacks the guns were mounted on rail road cars protected at vital points by The word is applied to the metal pro tection given to ships of war, usually the employment of steel helmets, and consisting of super-carbonized steel or nickel steel. See ARMOR PLATES.