The temporary suspension of hostilities between two armies or two nations at war, by mutual agreement, constitutes an armistice. It takes place sometimes when both are exhausted, and at other times when an endeavor to form a treaty of peace is being made.

While the nominal pay of a British private is one shilling a day, or twenty-four cents, he really does not receive much more than half that in actual cash. Deductions are charged to his account for extra supplies of rations and for washing, which bring the net amount down to about $1 a week.

There is a gun in the British navy, a twenty-two-ton Armstrong, which hurls a solid shot a distance of twelve miles, the highest point in the arc described by the shot being seventeen thousand feet above the earth's surface. The discharge of the gun cannot be heard at the place where the ball strikes.

Armed bands of peasants are called guerrillas in Spain. The insurrections of Jack Cade, Wat Tyler, and Robert Kett would be so called in Spain. From 1808 to 1814 guerrillas were regularly organized against the French, and the names of Empecinado, the Pastor Merino, and Mina, as leaders, are well known.

Antietam is a narrow but deep river in Maryland, United States, falling into the Potomac, seven miles above Harper's Ferry. On its banks, near Sharpsburg, was fought a bloody battle between the Union troops under McClellan, and the Confederate army under Lee, in which the former remained master of the field, though at a loss of nearly thirteen thousand men.

The Gaelic word claymore, meaning "the great sword," is properly used of the old Celtic one-handed, two-edged long sword, often engraved on ancient tombstones, with the guards pointing downwards. The name is now commonly given, but inaccurately, to the basket-hilted sword of the officers of Highland regiments.

The Seven Days' Battles is the designation of a series of fierce engagements (June 25 to July 1, 1862), which took place in the neighborhood of Richmond, Va., between the Federals, under McClellan, and the Confederates, commanded by Lee, resulting in the retreat of the former to Harrison's Landing on the James River.

By the naval term "boarding" is understood an attack upon one vessel by another in which a company of armed men from the one forces its way on board the;other. In the days of ironclads, boarding of war vessels is less frequent than of old. A "boarding net" is a framework of stout rope-netting placed so as to obstruct boarders.

Cartouch was formerly a name for a portable wooden case for holding cannon balls or musket bullets. A gun cartouch now means merely a waterproof canvas case for holding the cartridges of a field battery, one to each ammunition box. The cartridge box carried by the soldiers used to be called a cartouch in England, and still is in France.

The simultaneous discharge of all the guns on one side of a ship of war is termed a broadside. The fighting power of a ship used to be estimated by the weight of all the shot and shell that could be fired off at once from one side or half of the ship. Thus, the broadside of the old-fashioned "Duke of Wellington" 131-gun war steamer, amounted to 2,400 pounds.

The military term Uhlans was a name originally given to light cavalry armed and clothed in semi-oriental fashion. A body of Uhlans was formed for the French army by Marshal Saxe. But the word is now familiar as a term for the Prussian light cavalry armed with the lance, who gained glory by their dash, bravery and swiftness of movement during the Franco-German war.

The casus belli, occasion for war, is the reason alleged by one power for going to war with another. It is quite impossible to reduce these causes or reasons to any definite code; enough that in 1870 King Wil-helm's cold-shoulder to M. Benedetti was a casus belli between France and Germany, and that in 1847 the burning of a Jew's bedstead at Athens was all but one between France and Britain.

In the French and some other continental armies, the vivandiere is a female attendant in a regiment, who sells spirits and other comforts, ministers to the sick, marches with the corps, and contrives to be a universal favorite. From the Algerian campaigns onward the vivandiere wore a modified (short-petticoated) form of the regimental uniform; but this arrangement has been forbidden by government.

The calumet or "peace-pipe" of the North American Indians, is a tobacco pipe having a stem of reed or painted wood about two feet and a half long, decorated with feathers, with a large bowl, usually of red soapstone. After a treaty has been signed, the Indians fill the calumet with the best tobacco, and present it to the representatives of the party with whom they have been entering into alliance, themselves smoking out of it afterwards. The presentation of it to strangers is a mark of hospitality and to refuse it would be considered an act of hostility.

The European soldiery called Landwehr ("Land-defence") is a military force in the German and Austrian empires, forming an army reserve, but not always retained under arms. Its members, although care is taken that they are sufficiently exercised, spend most of their time in civil pursuits during peace, and are called out for military service only in times of war or of commotion.

The battle of Lissa was the last great sea fight in history and the only one wherein armor-clad vessels have opposed other similar vessels in any number. It was fought on July 20, 1866, between the Austrians, under Admiral Tegethoff, and the Italians, under Admiral Persano. Each side had twenty-three vessels, but eleven of the Italian fleet were armor-clad, while the Austrians mustered only seven armor-clads.

Infernal machines are contrivances made to resemble ordinary harmless objects, but charged with some dangerous explosive. An innocent-looking box or similar receptacle is partly filled with dynamite or other explosive, the rest of the space being occupied by some mechanical arrangement, mostly clockwork, which moves inaudibly, and is generally so contrived that, when it has run down at the end of a predetermined number of hours or days, it shall cause the explosive substance to explode.