How Hard Was It to Supply Arrows to Archers in Battles?

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In The King and many other films, archers loose arrow after arrow, as if they have a never-ending supply. But was that really the case? Didn’t they run out sooner or later? In reality, each archer carried only a limited number of arrows, and a quiver could be emptied quickly. So, what happened once they were out? How did they get more arrows? In this video, we’ll explore how English longbowmen were resupplied during the Hundred Years’ War—and how they ensured they never ran out of ammunition in the middle of battle.

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Bibliography
Barker, Juliet, Agincourt. Henry V. and the Battle that made England, London 2005, Kindle Edition.
Bradbury, Jim, The Medieval Archer, Woodbridge 1985.
Hardy, Robert, Longbow. A Social and Military History, Stroud 2006.
Owens, Jonathan D./Wilinson, Henry T./Ramsden, Gary P., The Bows and Arrows of Agincourt: Can the Lessons of Medieval History be used to Inspire and Engage the Next Generation of Operations Managers?, Lincoln/Wallingford 2018.
Wadge, Richard, Arrowstorm. The World of the Archer in the Hundred Years War, Cheltenham 2007.

00:00-01:00 Intro
01:00-13:03 How longbowmen were resupplied in the Hundred Years War

Date: November 2, 2025
History archer archery arrow supply to armies middle ages english archer english archers english longbow historical archery history hundred years war hundred years war longbow logistics middle ages longbow archers longbow history longbow supply medieval medieval logistics Middle Ages supply of arrow medieval

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39 thoughts on “How Hard Was It to Supply Arrows to Archers in Battles?”

  4. This is inaccurate. Records from the Hundred Years War make it clear that, longbowmen fired up to 6 arrows per minute. Anyone familiar with firing a longbow with a 120-140lb draw-weight, like Medieval bows, well knows the serious effort required to fire a single arrow. Doing that 70 times is quite feat of strength and endurance. To suggest, anyone "fired much faster" shows total ignorance of the subject.
    Go fire a heavy longbow then, edit your vid!
    The detailed supply records kept personally by Henry V make it easy to calculate requirements and rates of use expected. These do not, support your claims of machine-gun style arrow fire.
    Arrows are easy to make, given the required materials, which are simple and easy to obtain. That, was the major strength of the longbow, – cheap, simple, quick and easy to make, so could be mass produced, yet was very effective. Equipping archers was cheap and the skills required were already used in hunting, so recruiting large numbers and putting them in the field was easy.
    War bows fired 5 ounce iron bodkin heads, not the classic arrowheads you show.
    Henry's records show, they took both finished arrows, and raw materials to make many more, over to France at the start of Henry's invasion.
    Archers DID run out from behind their stakes to gather arrows from the battlefield. Accounts from several battles confirm this. Battles are not, orderly, linear events. They wax and wane, with periods of charges and furious activity, with exhausted pauses and regroupings between. This gave opportunities to gather up arrows that fell close to your ranks.
    You may, have put a lot of effort into the vid, but not, enough to actually fire a Medieval war bow, nor to really research the subject and it's use.

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