The defense of the knight against the weapons of his opponents, consisting of his complete
harness . Often this was used only to denote the "hard" bits of the harness, the hardened
leather or plate defenses, rather than the softer arming garments, though sometimes layered cloth was also used as the sole defense, as in a
jupon . I use the English spelling with the "-our" rather than the Americanized version to denote the difference between modern armored combat vehicles (e.g. tanks) and armour that is meant for the individual medieval soldier.