The White Council

Re: Effective tactics? Nope, still a pillock!!!!

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : : Back on thread, why was Sauron supposedly a pillock, all Karl is doing is stating that he was- let us hear arguments, why??

: : ok, look at it like this. sauron has an absoltley overwhelming military advantage. We can't reckon the size of his military might, but suffice to say if as at the battle before the morrannon, where the west was out numbered 'ten times, and more than ten times'it is easy to say a v large army was at his disposal. Why then not procede to a massive invasion of gondor (instead of just an army from minas morghul with attendant easterlings),why not use everything in a final, huge overwhelming defeat? The russians did pretty much the same thing on the eastern front, they did use very good tactics but also the shear amount of troops available to them meant that the germans would have run out of ammuntion before killing them all. : : Sauron appears was in a bit of a similar situation. If he had co-ordinated himself with saruman (by dominating his will), rohan would have been crushed fairly easily. after that the only stong realm left would have been gondor, which came exceedingly close to defeat anyway. : : My thing is sauron should have won - only by being over cautios and not planning or using his resources effectivley (he did in the first age, why not now???) did he lose. : : So therefore sauron = pillock

: You are forgetting that they were other threats besides Gondor. You have Rohan. The Men of Dale and the dwarves also had to be fought. Thrauindal(sp?) had to be contended with. Also Sauron had to worry about The One being found and/or used. I doubt that Sauron could have have could have dominated another Maia's will completely(ie. Saruman). Also Sauron had learned about being rash. He saw Morgoth barely winning battles against the Noldor and then getting taken down by The Valar. He also saw what had happened in Numenor when he had gotten to rash. Then he got defeated by Gil-Galad because he proclaimed himself too soon. That probably was a very humbling experience. Why should he have taken chances? If Frodo had not destroyed The One then Gondor and all of the others would have fallen unless The Valar interfered. Considering Sauron had no idea that The One was going to be destroyed, he did what any smart commander would have done. : -Thentaran

I think you hit the nail on the head. Sauron had a long campaign before him. Minas Tirith, the fiefs of the South, Rohan, Saruman , Lorien , Greenwood, Dale, Erebor, Iron Hills, Imladris, Lindon. Sauron had the luxury of being able to take on those different foes in detail (that's military-speak for one at a time)but a defeat or two along the way and he'd be in trouble.

The text says somewhere that the army he held back in Mordor was greater than the force sent under the WK to Minas Tirith. While you generally don't divide your forces in the face of the enemy, he had such numbers that it was tactically sound to do so. One force could take Minas Tirith and the southern fiefs and then perhaps turn north up through Eriador. The larger force under his personal command would take out Lorien and Greenwood...probably leave Dale and Erebor for later, then cross the Mistys and invest Imladris. Hopefully by that time the WK's army would have worked its way up and beseiged Imladris from the west and positioned itself to hold and relief force from Lindon at bay.

The WK's real tactical blunder at Pellenor was scattering his forces all over the place. He sent forces north, kept a large force at Cair Andros, plus had his beseiging force around Minas Tirith. Had he kept his force more concentrated he could have absorbed more easily the attack of the Rohirrim. As it was, they were caught flat-footed when the third front was opened by Aragorn and when hit from several directions could not muster large enough mass in any one spot to counterattack. Now it was the Free Peoples who could defeat their foe in detail. While very numerous overall, none of the WK's individual units apppeared to be of sufficient sterngth to take on the Free People's forces. In effect, I think the situation was 10 medium size forces for the WK versus three more power forces (on an individual basis.

Russ