Posted: November 14, 1999 at 01:08:25: by Josh
Speaking of horse archers in middle earth, there is little in tolkien's texts which indicates that the Rangers of the north were great horse archers or even the great specialised archers that the rangers of roleplaying are always viewed as.
It is mentioned that they used the bow but also the rangers were not so much a united military force (really they didn't resemble much of an "army" at all) they were a groupd of wanderers and huntsmen who guarded the northlands by hunting the servants of sauron. As such great huntsmen it seems likely to me that they were probably skilled in the use of the bow as a hunter's weapon. This is very different then the use of a bow in mass combat.
First of all it wouldn't matter in a large scale battle if you had thirty of the best horse archers who ever lived or even a hundred. Archers in both medieval and classical military tactics did their work by hailing clouds of arrows into the enemy. A few very skilled archers would make much less difference in a battle then a multitude of average archers.
It seems unlikely to me that the rangers were geared to large scale combat of any type let alone archery simply because they lacked the numbers. They only way they could survive themselves was by spliting up and wandering the wild in small bands secretivly. Given this kind of life it seems likely that the rangers were probably skilled in many different areas, healing, hunting, tracking, stealth, foraging... the least likely skill area would be large military operations. Aragorn had this expertise but unlike most of his people he had traveled most of the known world and faught with botht he Rohirrim and Gondorians before.
The Rohirrim are mentioned as using horse archers but only a small number. Even at Helms deep the Rohirrim had only a few archers even on foot. The Noldor however were probably the only specific instance of a large battle situation using horse archers. On a couple of different occasions in the 5 battles of beleriand Tolkien mentioned the advance of mounted archers from the host of Fingolfin and his sons. On one of these occassions I believe (if I remember correctly) the horse archers of the noldor rode a circle around Glaurung (on his first outing when he was not mature yet) and shot him full of arrows so he fled back to Angband. On one historical point however, when speaking of classical and medieval armies use of archers... this was generaly more limited than seems to be thought by some here. The Romans and Greeks did not make much use of archers at all (that is not to say that they didn't use them but that they figured at best as a secondary in the main order of battle of said armies). The bow was more prominant in the steppe cultures of the caspian sea and caucasas areas, parthians, scythians etc.
In the medieval case archers were considered lower class common "cannon fodder" pardon the expression up until Crecy in the hundred years war. Until that time the only archers of renown in medieval combat were the Genoese crossbowmen, which was a large company of mercenaries. Until the sudden advent of the english longbowmen at Crecy and Poitiers the bow was seen for the most part as a tool of the huntsman and a childs toy by the medieval Europeans. So in Europe the bow, and especialy mounted archers, were looked down on if not outright scorned until the 14th century. In the middle east and asia however tactics were quite different and the mounted archer figured quite prominently. In fact with the exception of the 1st crusade and the battle of Arsoulf in the third crusade(Richard vs. Saladin) the non bow equipped Europeans got their a**'s handed to them almost every time they faced an 'oriental' opponent in open field combat. Well sorry for my ramblings but tolkien and military history are my two favorite topics so when I get going :)
Josh
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