The White Council

Re: Battles in ME

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

Snip

: I didn't forget the old military adages, but adages don't always govern what happens in fiction. Sauron was counting on the Nazgul demoralizing the defenders in Minas Tirith, and they did a pretty good job of that.

True, but counting on it would be too much of a chance to take in confronting the major enemy of The Enemy, Glorfindel, Gandalf etc. might show up to stir up matters with the Nazgûl and, who knows, some could even fall in battle. So the one thing that would be easy to attain and would almost certainly defeat Gondor was overwhelming numbers, I have a hard time imagining a competent general like the WK or Sauron placing all their bets on one card so to speak. Rather, I imagine they would go about it like Monty, who would make a tactic that was almost certain to wear down his enemies instead of taking wild chances like Blitzkrieg. Those would more likely be the tactic of the Free Peoples whose only chance of survival it would be (I here equalise Blitzkrieg and Armies of the Dead, Rohirrim taking a circumventing route (The Ardennes) etc.).

: Elfhelm was able to disperse the blocking force with only 3,000 men. He came in from BEHIND, so that gave him an advantage, but he still would have had a serious problem taking on much more than 10,000 men and Orcs.

You are the one to bring up the demoralisation of the forces of darkness after the defeat.

: And though the Romans were good, they weren't indefeatable. They lost many armies against the barbarians (5 or 6, I think, before Marius stopped the Cimbri and Teutoni, Varus' three legions in the Teutoberger Wald, the disaster at Adrianople, etc.) and Hannibal walked all over Italy for years with relative impunity.

You know my endquote concerning Varus and I wrote my Ba.D. on Roman Germanic warfare in the first century A.D. when the germanic one as well as societies was in transition. However, what I meant was the Emperor's, professional Roman army which was very rarely defeated, the varus-defeat of Teutoburger Wald was an ambush by allied auxilliary forces in league with their local kin. The Romans were marching in no particular order and bringing large baggage trains including noncombatants and concubines as they believed the area to be safe, subjugated and allied to themselves. They were thus defeated but put up a very hard (four day) fight. I am rambling off track... What I mean is that the Professional Roman armies of the military dynasts and Emperors were very rarely defeated (and, BTW, inflicted extremely severe casualties on their enemies even in defeat as their formation called for very strong soldiers and co-ordination). BTW, I seem to remember the Romans under incompetent generals losing first 2 (or 4) legions and later 9??? 13??? to the Cimbri and Teutons (I will not restate where they were from;_)) before Marius, who was very competent defeated them soundly. I can look it up if you want to know, I have both the names of the battlefields, number of legions and the names of the commanders somewhere.

: The armies of northwestern Middle-earth don't usually overcome superior numbers. The Rohirrim were outnumbered and defeated by Saruman's forces. The Ents showed up with maybe 10,000 Huorns (who knows -- maybe there were half a million of them) and turned the tide. Aragorn used the Dead to clear the Corsairs and Haradrim out of Lebennin and Lamedon -- these were highly unusual tactics. Any army that is thrown into a panic, no matter how large or well-trained it may be, is going to lose a battle unless it can be quickly rallied (and this has only rarely happened in history that I can recall).

Many historic battles of M-E has the armies of the west facing and defeating superior numbers and I have a hard time believing that the Dúnedain would have diminished so much since the Time of Isildur (the "Disaster at Gladden Fields" explicitly states that the Dúnedain could take on superior numbers of enemies and expect to win. Whether it is because they were "High Men" or because they were professional soldiers on a twenty-year contract, like the Romans, I cannot say, probably both, and the waning would not be that bad- every description we get of the Gondorians seems to place them above "normal men". Though not much above the Rohirrim who definately seems (in my perception) to posses the courage and spirit of wild, free and barbaric northmen that the Romans so praised and feared in the Germans (the biggest compliment to a legionaire was to call him "brave as a german") and the other Europeans so praised and feared in the Vikings.

: So, when Aragorn and the Rohirrim showed up at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, it wasn't just a matter of reinforcements showing up and blowing Sauron's 5-to-1 or whatever advantage away. The cloud rolled back, the ships people thought were carrying more of Sauron's troops turned out to be in Gondorian hands, and the Lord of the Nazgul was slain (brutally murdered, whatever). And being attacked on both flanks didn't help the morale of Sauron's forces, either.

Most certainly plain truth, but that says nothing of numbers.

: Just consider the psychological aspects of what happened. The Lord of the Nazgul breached the gate. Everything was going his way. Then Gandalf appeared in the breach and things started falling to pieces. First the Rohirrim attacked the army from the rear, and they attacked at three points. Sometime later (maybe an hour? a half hour?) the Lord of the Nazgul fell. Then the cloud rolled back. THEN the Corsair fleet showed up and displayed the banner of the kings of Gondor. So Gondor and Rohan will flooding the fields with troops from the north, from the south, and from the city.

Again I agree. And those exact events would make up for the numbers.

: That it still took the remainder of the day to decide the issue shows Gothmog was a pretty capable commander, but also that the outnumbered forces of the West weren't just running around butchering helpless enemies. The Rohirrim lost a lot of men and horses. Tolkien doesn't dwell on the matter, but I suspect a lot of Eoreds were hastily reorganized in the two days after the battle, because their organization as an army was probably severely disrupted.

He does describe their horrendous losses (comment on them) and on the fact that the Easterlings (I think it is Easterlings, but possibly the others as well) rally at every small terrain feature they possibly can (I think he mentions farms and small hillocks/knolls). This does not invalidate my argument that the army of the W.K. and Gothmog (wonder who he was...) outnumbered the forces of the Free Peoples many times, actually I can use it to substanciate my theory as it is all the more miraculous that they did indeed win and that that was indeed what Tolkien intended, that it would be a miracle if they survived, a miracle large enough to make them flock to the new King's banner and accept him with no grumbling. NT