Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/770

 734: ARMORICA to which are added the manifaire, protecting the crest and arch of the neck, the poitrel of solid plates covering the counter, and the croupier, also of solid steel, extending over the whole rump of the animal from the castle of the saddle to the tail. These parts of the horse armor constitute what is called the barding proper. It was in this reign that the art of defence had so far surpassed the means of of- fence, that it is on record that in Italy, where the best armor, that of Milan, was made, two armies fought from 9 o'clock in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, in which battle not only no person was killed, but no one was wounded. From this date, however, the use of armor has constantly declined, and with the description given above its real history may be said to end; for piece by piece was gradually laid aside as firearms were used and improved more and more, and hand-to-hand conflicts were avoided. At the beginning of the present cen- tury the only troops who still wore defensive armor were the heavy cavalry of the Austrian, Russian, and French imperial armies, who were all cuirassiers. Napoleon I. made great use of this arm, but at Waterloo the iron-sheathed cuirassiers went down like grass before the English household troops, who wore no armor ; and in the last battles of the Crimea, although there were cuirassiers in the armies of all the three belligerents, no use was made of them in the field. In the early part of our late civil war an attempt was made to introduce bullet- proof waistcoats of steel among the national troops, but they were soon laid aside. For a detailed history of armor, see especially "A Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour," &c., by Dr. (Sir Samuel) Meyrick (2d ed., London, 1844) ; also an excellent essay and catalogue in the Catalogue des collections composant le musee d'artillerie, by O. Penguilly 1'IIaridon (Paris, 1862). Alt WOKIC l, the name anciently given to the N. W. coast of Gaul, from the Loire to the Seine. It had a considerable fleet and carried on a large intercourse with Britain. Maximus, a Roman officer, having revolted with the le- gions of Britain against the emperor Gratian, A. D. 383, passed into Gaul with two Roman legions and a number of aboriginal Britons, among whom was one Conan Mariadec, to whom Maximus gave the government of Ar- morica. Mariadec obtained the recognition of his independence from the emperor Theodo- sius, and in the 5th century thousands of Brit- ish Celts came over, rather than remain nnder the hated Saxon yoke. They found in Armo- rica a hospitable reception, and a dynasty akin to them in race. The descendants of Conan Mariadec successfully repelled the Danish, Nor- wegian, and Irish pirates from the coasts of Armorica, and also, on the land side, the various German tribes who invaded and rav- aged Gaul. During the 5th and 6th centuries it was the most peaceful and prosperous part of that country. The Christian religion was ARMS early propagated there. Bishops of Dol, Quim- per, and Vannes are recorded at the end of the 4th century, and the annals of Armorica pre- serve a long roll of Celtic saints whose names are not known elsewhere. From the influx of Britons Armorica about the 6th century be- gan to be called Brittany (Bretagne). ARMS, instruments or weapons of offence, as opposed to defensive armor. Arms may in this sense be separated into two broad divisions of ancient and modern, reckoning the latter from the adaptation of gunpowder to purposes of war ; and each of these may be again distin- guished into missiles and weapons for hand-to- hand encounter. It is evident that offensive arms were prior in their invention and use to defensive coverings. In the earliest wars re- corded in history, missiles were the principal weapons used. The bow (see ARCHERY) and the javelin were in the period chronicled in the Old Testament the favorite weapons of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Parthians, and other oriental races; while their instruments for close fight were merely weak, straight dag- gers, acinaces, which word has been falsely translated scymitars. In the heroic wars, as described by Homer, missiles were still, in the hands of the leading chiefs and heroes, the most important weapons ; a ponderous spear, hurled from the hand, and rarely if ever used to thrust with as a pike, being the instrument which began nearly all the duels of the cham- pions, although they were often ended by the short sword. The masses, indeed, seem to have fought in phalanx or close column with the pike, or sarissa, afterward the arm of the free Greeks of the republican cities, and of the barbaric kingdoms of Macedonia and upper Hellas. This was 24 feet long, and the spear- men held it in both hands, having their per- sons obliquely covered by the great round shield worn upon the left arm. The tactic on which the success of this arm depended was a closely serried phalanx, ordinarily of 12 or 24, occasionally of 50 files in depth. If the enemy succeeded in breaking this phalanx, the men had recourse to their swords, which, however, seldom proved of much use after the spears had given way. The weapons of the Romans were a short, massive javelin, 6 feet long, in- cluding the triangular steel head of 18 inches, which they were wont to hurl into the lines of their enemy at 10 or 15 paces distant, and a short two-edged broadsword, probably in the first instance of Spanish origin and manufac- ture. This latter instrument, with which they were trained to stab rather than to strike, was that with which Rome cut her way to univer- sal empire. Her tactic, adapted to its use, was a loose array of open lines, each man standing three feet from his left and right hand com- rades, so that he had a clear space of six feet in which to manage his sword and buckler, and fighting as it were a duel or single com- bat, hand to hand, with his immediate oppo- nent, over whom his peculiar weapon, his sin-