The White Council

Re: The Invisible Infantry - Gondor's Secret Weapon ;)

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: [big huge snip]

: : For the population of the Gondorian capital at its height a : : similar sort of estimation is possible. Anumber of assumptions : : are needed :)

: : Imrahil says that 7,000 troops would have scarcely made up the : : vanguard of the Gondorian army of old. Presuming the army he : : refers to is one of the two field armies we know of then 7,000 : : van, 14,000 main battle, 7,000 rear guard x2 gives a : : professional army of 56,000. Compared with the Byzantine : : Tagmata of 40,000 it suggests a population for OSMENIL of : : 300,000 and perhaps one for Minas Tirith of around 100,000.

: These numbers are still way too small and reveal your Medievalist desires. :)

: I don't have the energy to go into it all, but even Karen Fonstad concedes Gondor would have had a much larger army at the end of the Third Age than you are conceding. You need to stop thinking of Gondor in terms of a Medieval nation and think of it in terms of the great nation it remained even in its decline. Sauron assmbled more than 100,000 soldiers to send against Gondor, possibly as many as 150,000. By conventional wisdom, you need at least 3-to-1 odds to assure yourself of military victory in a war. That would imply Gondor and Rohan had at least 50,000 soldiers (more than half of a professional standing -- militia would do Gondor little good in the longterm planning of the Stewards). Rohan had 12,000 Riders in its standing army. That leaves your 30,000+ figure for Gondor, but it's just the soldiers, not every man who can be assembled.

Was the Rohanish host a standing army? As in a paid force of professionals, or was it more like the Zulu system of brigading young men (delaying their ability to marry and become less useful warriors) for war whilst still using them for looking after the king's cattle etc.

Also if Gondor's population was relatively large and had a largish standing army, where were they? Neither the action at the causway forts or the initial battle at Pelargir are spoken of as if they involved particularly large Gondorian forces. The retreat from the forts is not spoken of as though a mere tenth had escaped. Indeed the battles before Pellenor are described as rearguard, delaying actions not pitched battles such as Pellenor itself. How many Free People troops fought at Pellenor? Including the Rohirrim and Aragorn's force I get the impression of between 15 and 20 thousand. So where is the large Gondorian standing force? Did they "Look, duck and vanish."

: If I've misunderstand what you're saying, however, then perhaps we should chalk it up to the congestion I'm currently dying from and I'll have to revisit this some other time.

You have my sympathy - the unseasonal hot-humid weather we are having here is playing merry hell with my sinuses.