The White Council

Re: Way off the mark.

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : : Tolkien almost never expressed any interest in South Africa, : : : except in one letter to Christopher (who was stationed there : : : at the time as a member of the RAF during WWII). He : : : describes it as a hot, dry, parched country and recalls that : : : his mother hated it, though he did wistfully say he'd like to : : : visit it again.

: : : Nonetheless, he never speaks of the Zulus or discusses their : : : history. They have no connection to his scholarly interests : : : whatsoever.

: : The Zulus were a parallel, a pastoral people with a well : : organised military, but without the sophistication of a culture : : like Rome or Gondor. I was not suggesting a direct inspiration : : for Tolkien from this people. Having said this, given the : : generation he was from, he would have found it hard to be : : totally ignorant of the Zulu War. The single action at : : Rorke's Drift resulted in the bestowal of a dozen or so : : Victoria Crosses, and the captive Zulu king Cetewayo was : : brought to Britain and was quite feted by the press.

: Rorke's Drift occurred in the 1870s or 1880s, IIRC. That's a generation before Tolkien's school years. The Boer War would have been a more recent experience for his generation, but the formative historical influence on Tolkien (most scholars seem to agree) was the first world war. No Zulu armies appeared on the battlefields of that war.

: : : : If you can find a single Gonorian force, in TWOTR, of any : : : : description whose numbers appear to be greater than 10,000 : : : : I would be surprised. There is no evidence for large : : : : numbers of Gondorian troops.

: : : I have given examples. There is a great deal of evidence for : : : large numbers of Gondorian troops.

: : Nothing over 10,000 though, excepting the"tithe" comment - and : : these I am certain were not standing professional troops.

: And I am just as certain they had to be. As for finding a single force greater than 10,000 at the time of the War of the Ring, you know fully well that's not going to happen. Gondor's soldiers came from all over. Hence, it follows that the larger forces were left behind, "all over". Angbor's army at Ethring probably numbered around 10,000, more-or-less equivalent to Denethor's 10-11,000 in Minas Tirith. Farther south there were probably 5-6,000 soldiers in Belfalas, and several thousand more soldiers in the western areas.

: : : There is no evidence suggesting the troops which march to : : : Minas Tirith are the personal followings of regional lords. : : : And all the leaders of Denethor's council (as well as : : : Boromir) are referred to as captains.

: : All the inferences point to these troops being irregular...

: And all the implications point to them being regular, with the two exceptions noted previously.

: :...I would make a possible exception for Imrahil's men-at-arms, : : it seems to me that Imrahil would probably have a similar guard : : to that established for Faramir. Having said this the troops : : mentioned as coming from the south are described as coming from : : their homelands not from cantonments or garrisons....

: Which is not an uncommon practice in modern armies. I don't know about the UK, but the United States still has regional reserve forces which recall the regional professional forces our armies have raised in past wars.

: The fact that troops are brought in from Dol Amroth, Lamedon, Pinnath Gelin, and other places doesn't mean they are local levies called up on the spur of the moment.

: : ...Indeed the placing of some of the troops argues quite : : eloquently against their being regular. When faced with the : : threat of invasion from the east and south it would be the : : highest folly to place any of your regular troops in such : : strategically insignificant backwaters as Morthond and Pinnath : : Gelin.

: Morthond is up in the White Mountains, and there had been trouble with Orcs there in the past. And the Morthond river was as viable a target for a Corsair attack as the Ringlo proved to be. The raiders advanced almost to the mountains to reach Ethring.

: Pinnath Gelin has to contend not only with the threat of incursions from Umbar but also raids from the Dunlendings living in the Adorn valley.

: : ...These areas were under no immediate threat and were of : : no military significance. Again with the exception of Dol : : Amroth, all the inference is that these troops had, like : : Cincinatus (?), merely put down their hoes and picked up : : spears.

: And yet all the implications speak against the inferences.

: : : And Tolkien speaks of companies in many places, if military : : : terminology is required. Beregond is a member of the Third : : : Company of the Citadel. : : : : : Where they would have been recruited has nothing to do with : : : where they were stationed. Denethor was responsible for all : : : of Gondor (with the apparent exception of Belfalas).

: : But these men - under their local lords - were coming from : : their homes to war....

: You don't know how they got to those local homes, however, or why they were soldiers, how long they had been soldiers, or really anything in detail.

: You are ASSUMING they had no real reason to be soldiers, and that therefore they must not have been soldiers.

: : That is the whole atmosphere of the description of their : : arrival at Minas Tirith. It is the mobilisation of the last : : reserves of armed man power, not the spatial rearrangement of a : : number of field forces of a standing army....

: How do you figure these were "last reserves"? Some of them had marched all the way across Gondor. That takes planning and supply to bring off successfully. Even those who marched only half the distance were a considerable force. And they all marched past regular forces that didn't leave their posts.

: It's obvious Denethor brought in men from places he felt could spare them, but it's also obvious from the two-pronged attack on the coasts that he had a lot of territory to defend.

: : ...You miss the meaning of these passages if you believe these : : are regular troops.

: I'm not missing the meaning so much as you are adding your own. You've so convinced yourself these MUST be feudal troops or militia that you're unwilling to consider the obvious alternatives.

: I think we need to let this one rest for now. Neither you nor I seem able to introduce any new points.

: Assumptions simply are not going to sway me, particularly when they don't agree with or at least are not supported by what's in the texts.

I believe that the two of you have dug your trenches too deep to come out of them no matter what the other proposes. It is possible to be more or less both right. If we look at the west-roman empire in its last century (I reckon it finally fallen with Romulus Augustulus in A.D. 476) its field armies consisted of a mixture of troops (not counting germanic warbands serving as mercenaries). It had local soldiers, these were the inheritants of the proud frontier forces of old that had had to take recourse in only part time soldiering and farming the rest of the time, you had the reserve units who were more professional and more varied. Now these distinctions even, does not hold closer scrutiny, it was all a mixture of whatever the emperor could scrape together (after the losses under Justinian in Parthia, the annihilation of an entire army at Hadrianopolis, and the batlles in the civil war right afterwards) much fighting was done by small armies, private followings and germanic warbands- all very small. In spite of this, the roman army of this time was as large as ever, it had just gone weak, immobile and unprofessional in a looong period of wars and invasions- see the similarity? ;-) Neithan Turambar