Yes.

But not the way you think.

In many European cities, at least in the late Middle Ages, there were craft guilds that collectively produced almost all kinds of weapons and armor that the group was able to produce. A guild is an industrial organization in which all members of a city engaged in a certain trade work together in some aspects and individually in others.

Although you can walk around European cities like an adventurer and probably find everything you might need. But you won't go to the "weapon shop", instead you have to go to the "swordsmith's shop" first.

The cutler can attach your preferred blade style to the handle – they can also reinstall the blade, repair any accessories, sharpen the blade and clean up rust. They manufacture parts other than blades, which are purchased from professional bladesmiths, who then assemble the parts and blades as required into the final piece.

But you may have to go to a joiner's or leatherman's shop to have the scabbard customized. In Genoa, it is probably more common to see crossbow manufacturers. Swords are made in Toledo, Toulouse and Bordeaux, halberds in Cologne, and small round shields in Barcelona. Armor makers can craft entire armor sets or just a portion of them, with some armor shops specializing in individual pieces.

In most of these stores, you can also customise special products, because at this time the entire production system in Europe still relies on apprentices in skilled trades.

Of course, if you're not interested in custom armor or weapons, you can also try the vendor's stall. You may be able to buy or borrow ready-made armor or weapons from reluctant city guards. At the annual fair, merchants from all walks of life come to big cities like Augsburg or Nuremberg to sell their wares, and you can wander the tent alleys to find village craftsmen who make simple weapons, or buy items that need to be resold or repaired.

This is how you, as a medieval soldier, buy the equipment you need for the war. But you may ask, why should I buy my own weapons and equipment, shouldn't my lord or king prepare them for me?

Unless you're a retainer of a lord, but that's late Middle Ages.

As I've mentioned in previous articles, soldiers in the early Middle Ages generally equipped their own armor and weapons.

For military service were carried out by those who could afford to arm themselves, such as landlords, nobles and wealthier commoners, as well as a large number of townspeople.

The kings of the Middle Ages, even in the late Middle Ages to raise armies by conscription, did not gather the peasants from the fields and then put their spears in their hands – they were armed classes in society in the conscription or hiring.

With soldiers bringing their own weapons and armor, if war comes, there is theoretically no need to make new weapons and armor, as soldiers will show up with the weapons and armor they already have.

However, before a major war or campaign, there may be a rush to buy weapons due to soldiers updating their equipment or trying to fulfill their obligation to provide it. Still, there are other sources that can be supplemented.

English soldiers in the late Middle Ages, and especially in the late 15th century, were often retainers of a large lord – they signed a contract of "uniform and maintenance" to serve the lord in exchange for payment, clothing, and food.

High lords may have a large arsenal to equip their retinue. Sir John Fastoff (1459-0) died with dozens of cloth jackets, light helmets, chain mail, and panel armor to equip his retainers.

These large stocks were to be used by retainers, mainly archers and spearmen. Such a large arsenal of weapons was formed in part by purchasing them in bulk, especially since bows could be purchased in bulk from merchants at bazaars. Before the war, the Great Lord may make a particularly large-scale purchase.

Finally, the monarch can directly provide armor and weapons. In order to maintain reserves, the king would set up a royal armory or arrange for the purchase of armor outright.

King Edward III's main armory was located in the Tower of London. There are numerous records of the 15th and early 0th centuries. In general, the Tower of London Armory receives a lot of new inventory in wartime, which is then gradually depleted.

Therefore, when the war between Britain and France in 1338 came to a fever pitch, a large amount of armor from the inventory was distributed.

The armor and weapons purchased by the kings could be enormous. Back in 1295, the Lombard merchant Frederick collected the following items for the fleet of King Philippe of France in Bruges:

2853 helmets

6309 round shields

4511 chainmail shirts

751 pairs of metal gloves

1374 neck guards

5067 pieces of plate armor

As a rule, kings dealt with middlemen, who bought armor and weapons from different sources and then pooled them. In the 16th and 0th centuries, merchants in Cologne and the Netherlands seem to have collected and resold large quantities of armor produced along the Ruhr River.

箭也許是中世紀最易損、最易耗的武器，而弓也很容易折斷和用完。英國國王愛德華三世在百年戰爭中前往法國征戰之前，就購買了24萬支箭。鑒於弓箭手一般應攜帶一張弓和24支箭，這些大量訂單可能是對弓箭手自身裝備的補充。

It is difficult to explain why the king needed to replenish the equipment of the army. This may be to quickly equip and arm a large number of soldiers, as well as to provide leaders with the best performing equipment to be most effective at any cost.

In general, while soldiers, lords, and kings stockpiled some armor and weapons in peacetime, wartime "emergency ordering" weapons were largely part of the equipment of medieval armies, at least in the late Middle Ages. These orders are "placed" to merchants and armorers who work in their own shops, rather than being crafted by armorers who are affiliated with the army.

Armor divisions attached to armies are mainly used to repair broken things, not to craft new equipment on the march - after all, a campaign is not suitable for crafting 1000 new breastplates.

The armor was made in advance, and while the Middle Ages were still pre-industrial, armor making was already an astonishing mechanized process.

The waterwheel powers the bellows of the blast furnace and wrought iron blowing furnace, and the waterwheel also drives the hammer mill to flatten the cast iron into steel or iron plates.

Armor was produced throughout Europe, but it seems that only a few regions exported the most. In the 15th and 0th centuries, Lombardy, in northern Italy, was the largest center of armor manufacturing, especially Milan, followed by Brescia.

In Milan, armorers were not subject to the guild rules of some German cities that limited the size of their workshops, so the Missaglias were able to create a large, integrated enterprise that controlled all armor manufacturing processes, from smelting ore to polishing finished armor. They can subcontract individual pieces of armor to different workshops, and with a clever division of labor, they can even complete a complete piece of armor in just one day.

The city of Brescia, near Milan, also produced large quantities of armor, and seems to have specialized in inexpensive mass armor production. There are more than 150 known Brescia armor workers in the late 0th and 0th centuries, and this does not include apprentices or other unnamed workers.

Between Brescia and Milan, Italian exports spread across most of Europe.

Another major source of armor is the area around Cologne and the Westphalian region.

There don't seem to be any big workshops here. Since there was not a large production center in this part of Germany, much of the "Cologne" armor seems to have been made by small shops (about a dozen or fewer people) in towns such as Ingolstadt and then concentrated by merchants in Cologne. Based on the low price of these armors (7 days of wages for 0 years, 0 days of wages for 0 years), it can be assumed that they were produced very quickly and cheaply.

In contrast, in the 16th century, it cost 0 to 0 days of wages to make a good full suit of armor for a soldier from Milan or other quality production centers, and it remained high by the 0th century.

When it comes to high-quality armor, some cities in Germany seem to take this seriously. Landshut and Augsburg produced superior armor, but they did not produce large quantities of armor for export.

On the other hand, Nuremberg's arrangement of armor merchants was also strange. For most of history, the City Council restricted armorer shops to 4 masters and 0 to 0 apprentices or full apprentices. These regulations may be suspended before major competitions or wars, demonstrating the importance of occasional emergency orders.

By the 1000th century, there were shared hydraulic hammer mills (0 drop weights in 0 years) to produce steel plates, but other than that, the shops did not seem to be able to take full advantage of the economies of scale. Theoretically, Nuremberg had strict quality control in place to ensure that it was known for its high-quality armor. However, there were so many armor makers in Nuremberg that they produced a considerable amount of armor, and were able to fulfill orders for 0 pieces of armor as early as the 0th century.

It may have been the pressure of these large orders that led some armorers to resell cheap armor from Cologne as armor produced in Nuremberg. Both guild records and the metallurgy of Nuremberg armor indicate that manufacturers cut corners, making armor from inferior steel or even wrought iron (or buying it from elsewhere and reselling it).

The last region to be mentioned is the Low Countries. While some Dutch merchants seem to have been selling armor from Westphalia, the region of what is now Belgium was a center of armor production in its own right. Many orders for armor in Britain were made to merchants in Flanders or other parts of the Low Countries, although some of these orders may have been resold by merchants for armor from elsewhere.

These merchants are the equivalent of arms dealers, and their role is to supply large quantities of arms that are not available in the region, or to supply them in bulk at cheaper prices.

In this context, it can be said that a truly international large-scale arms trade in Europe has long been in Europe.

The reason is that although almost every country has a domestic weapons and equipment industry, these industries are usually not enough to meet "urgent orders" during war, especially when the king or a big lord needs to buy armor and weapons for thousands of soldiers.

In the armor industry, there are about two groups of people who can be called "bulk arms dealers" – merchants who buy from armorers or middlemen and sell to armor buyers, and specialized ordnance dealers, who are both merchants and craftsmen, who control the complete supply chain and are able to fulfill large volumes of orders. The latter is a special case, with the Misalia family of Milan being the best example.

The Missalia family created a vertically integrated multinational armor business, and by 6 or so they had 0 factories in Milan and subsidiary factories in Rome, Naples, Barcelona and Tours. They used two mines and their associated furnaces to make billets and rented a hammer mill from the Duke of Milan.

In addition, unlike some places (such as England, which requires the import of high-quality armor steel from southern Austria), Milan is very close to the high-quality iron deposits in the Italian Alps. This means that large quantities of high-quality steel can be easily transported to Milan.

Second, the Missalia family controls every step of the process and divides the labor among subcontractors, creating extremely efficient operations and achieving significant economies of scale. They are also known for the quality of their armor - armor produced in Milan in the 15th century with armor dealer's marks is usually heat-treated to provide the best possible protection, and the steel is of the highest quality.

All this was possible because Milan had a complex subcontracting system that was unmatched by German cities north of the Alps.

German armorers controlled almost only their own workshops, and their relations with their own workers were limited by guilds. As a result, a family of armorers is unable to establish commercial dominance over their competitors, which is exactly what they intended.

For example, despite their talents, the Helmschmid family was never able to acquire the other armorers in Augsburg or reduce them to subcontractors.

Milan is a different story. Thus, in Milan, workers could be hired to make very characteristic full armor, which was then assembled at the end by the "senior armorer".

We can see evidence of this practice in the way Milanese armor was marked in the 15th century – each worker would mark the armor he made, and then the master would mark each piece of armor as a mark for the final quality inspection.

In addition, many employment contracts show specialized workers working on a single piece. These contracts can take many forms, usually to make a specific piece of armor, such as a helmet.

There will also be more complex contractual arrangements between armorers and between armorers and merchants - in some cases, one party will provide the funds and materials, the other will provide all the labor, and the party providing the funds will receive two-thirds of the profits.

The significance of the latter arrangement is that one party becomes an investor while the other party is entirely a producer. I have to say, it's too much like capitalism!

As a result, Milan's armor stands out in terms of quality and volume, and its armor occupies a truly international market.

In contrast, other armor centers seem to mostly serve regional markets – armorers from the Low Countries sell in Burgundy and the North Sea region, and South German armorers sell in neighboring countries such as the Holy Roman Empire and Poland.

In conclusion, the large quantities of armor ordered by the kings of the Middle Ages in wartime seem to have been supplied primarily by a few cities or regions in Europe that specialized in the manufacture of large quantities of armor, and could be made quickly if necessary.

The local armour industry in countries such as England or France could meet individual needs in peacetime, and although it was cheaper than imported armour, they did not have the capacity to produce large quantities of armour in wartime, and the quality was not comparable to that of Nuremberg and Milan armour.

So, as a veteran, you already know that if you want to survive longer on the battlefield, Italian or German armor is the best suit for you. But if it's hard for you to make a trip to the famous armor center, then there's another option. Many cities in the Middle Ages always had an annual (and sometimes more than once) bazaar, where you could buy good equipment if you knew what to do.

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