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Orc Logistics

10 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Tags

American Civil War, BEF, Belgium, British Expeditionary Force, food and ammunition, French Army, German Army, Great War, guerilla, Helm's Deep, Horace Smith-Dorrien, Le Cateau, Marius, Marius' mules, Minas Tirith, Mons, Orcs, Paris, Romans, Schlieffen, Schlieffen Plan, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Wagons, World War I

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In August, 1914, as the German army was pushing through Belgium

image1germanarmy.jpg

in its attempt to sweep to the west of Paris and drive the French armies

image2french.jpg

eastwards towards the Germans waiting for them there (the so-called Schlieffen Plan),

image3schlieffen.jpg

they were met by the small (70,000 man) BEF, British Expeditionary Force,

image4tommy.jpg

a few miles north of the Franco-Belgian border, near the town of Mons, where the British fought a delaying action.

image5mons.jpg

The Germans were in such strength that the British were forced to pull back, retreating southward with the Germans pursuing so closely that the commander of one half of the British army (2nd Corps), Horace Smith-Dorrien,

image6hsd.jpg

decided that it was necessary to fight a second delaying action, at Le Cateau.

image7lecateau.jpg

A major reason to do so was not just that the German pursuit was so close, but that it was necessary to protect the trains.  This doesn’t mean the railways, but the endless lines of wagons

image8gswagon.jpg

which carried all the food and ammunition for the soldiers and stretched for miles behind them..

image9marching.jpg

It was also primarily horse-drawn and, on narrow roads, mostly unpaved, the trains moved very slowly, which was a major reason why armies in earlier centuries rarely ever campaigned during winter.

image10turenne.jpg

This was a problem, all the way back to the Romans.  In the 2nd century BC, the Roman general, Marius, in an attempt to do away with as much of a baggage train as he could,

image11romanwagon.JPG

ordered his men to carry as much of their equipment as possible, thus cutting down on baggage wagons and pack animals.  His men were less than pleased at being so loaded down and began to call themselves “Marius’ mules”.

image12mule.jpg

In the late 18th to early 19th century, when French revolutionary armies swelled beyond the ability to pay to supply them, the order was to travel lightly and to live off the land.  This may have reduced baggage—and even, perhaps, speeded up movement—but it made local people very hostile to the French and, in Spain, the response was to ambush the French whenever possible, which is where the word “guerilla” (originally meaning “little war”) comes from.

image13spguerillas.jpg

image14spguerillas.jpg

This could happen, particularly to Union supply trains,

image15wagons.jpg

during the American Civil War.

image16ambush.jpg

So, such trains were utterly necessary—if a large army had to cross miles of territory and perhaps fight on the way, they would need everything a train could carry.  At the same time, trains could be both vulnerable and thus draw off numbers of soldiers to protect them when such soldiers might be better employed on the battlefield, as well as cumbersome, because they were slow-moving, forcing armies to march at their speed (and in dry summer weather, the dust they raised could give away the direction of an army’s movements).

image17wagontrain.jpg

In The Lord of the Rings, we see two invasions:  that which attacks Helm’s Deep

image18helms.jpg

and that which attacks Minas Tirith.

image19mt.jpg

The mass of invaders is vividly described:

“For a staring moment the watchers on the walls saw all the space between them and Dike lit with white light:  it was boiling and crawling with black shapes, some squat and broad, some tall and grim, with high helms and sable shields.  Hundreds and hundreds more were pouring over the Dike and through the breach.”  (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 7, “Helm’s Deep”)

“The numbers that had already passed over the River could not be guessed in the darkness, but when morning, or its dim shadow, stole over the plain, it was seen that even fear by night had scarcely over-counted them.  The plain was dark with their marching companies, and as far as eyes could strain in the mirk there sprouted, like a foul fungus-growth, all about the beleaguered city great camps of tents, blac or somber red.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

And yet there is no hint of what will supply them in their assaults and beyond.  We could argue, of course, that, as in so many things, JRRT is interested in the movement of his narrative and its effects:  masses of orcs are much more menacing than long lines of wagons, and we’re sure that this is actually the case, but there is another possibility.  The Great War began in Belgium as a war of movement, huge armies attempting to outflank and block each other like chess players.  For better or worse, those armies needed such baggage trains, as we’ve said.  By the time Tolkien had arrived at the Western Front, in mid-1916, the war had become static, as if both sides had dug trenches and were besieging each other.

image20atrench.jpg

image20trench.jpg

Supply was clearly still necessary, but it was a complex combination of ports and ships and railway lines and wagons and mules and even human mules, close to the front.

image21.jpg

In a way, the whole business of supply had begun to look like just that:  a business, like importing bananas from the Caribbean, having them arrive in London, then passing them on by train to cities and towns across Britain.

image22bananas.jpg

So, instead of being part of long marching columns,image23marching.jpg

their even longer lines of wagons lagging behind, Second Lieutenant Tolkien would have seen long lines of men and animals, lugging endless boxes and cans and bundles—

image24carrying.jpg

image25carrying.jpg

necessary for war, but hardly dramatic, and so best left to the imagination of certain readers, those who can never see a battle without wondering, “When it’s time for lunch, who feeds all of those soldiers—or orcs (and never mind what certain people might eat)?”

image26lunch.jpg

As always, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

Dragon Economics 101

03 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

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Tags

Artillery, Belgium, Cathedral, Cloth Hall, Dale, Esgaroth, Great War, howitzers, Laketown, Lonely Mountain, No Man's Land, Smaug, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, trenches, Ypres

Here is a postcard of the town of Ypres, in southern Belgium, in the years before the Great War, with its famous Cloth Hall and cathedral.

image1clothhallcath.jpg

The Cloth Hall was begun in 1200 and finished in 1304, being a center of the woolen trade in the region.

image2clothhall.jpg

The cathedral was begun in 1230 and finished in 1370.

image3cathedral.jpg

Then the Great War began and Ypres was just behind Allied lines.

image4map.jpg

Artillery had begun in the Middle Ages, as something which looks like a high school science experiment (plus armor).

image5millemete.jpg

By 1914, it was much bigger and much more efficient.

image6howitzer.jpg

(The German says, “Our Growlers!”—perhaps a soldier’s slang word for heavy howitzers like these?)

And, as the war progressed, bigger and more efficient yet.

image7biggergun.jpg

And even more so—to the point where some guns became so big and heavy that only railways could move them around.

image8railwaygun.jpg

Needless to say, when shells from such guns hit Ypres, the damage they caused was enormous.

image9ypres

 

image10ruins.jpg

And not only to Ypres, but to the whole region—entire villages disappeared, as did forests, landscapes became moonscapes.

image11nomansland.jpg

For some months in 1916, Second Lieutenant Tolkien walked through, lived through, this devastated world,

image12jrrt

which took many years to be repaired.

image13ypres.jpg

And, in the meantime, the economies of Europe suffered, with so much damaged or shifted to war work, and governments left with enormous debts, both the victors and the vanquished.

This devastation made us think about another devastation, first described by Thorin in Chapter One of The Hobbit, and, of course we wondered if JRRT thought of the damage caused by the endless, pitiless bombardments as he wrote about the ruin brought by a dragon.

Thorin begins, as we did at the opening of this posting, showing a peaceful, prosperous world:

“Altogether those were good days for us, and the poorest of us had money to spend and to lend, and leisure to make beautiful things just for the fun of it, not to speak of the most marvellous and magical toys, the like of which is not to be found in the world now-a-days.  So my grandfather’s halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups, and the toy market of Dale was the wonder of the North.”

But, just as the Great War came to the ridges north of Ypres, so Smaug came down upon the town of Dale just below the Lonely Mountain and to the Mountain, as well:

“Then he came down the slopes and when he reached the woods they all went up in fire.  By that time all the bells were ringing in Dale and the warriors were arming.  The dwarves rushed out of their great gate; but there was the dragon waiting for them.  None escaped that way.  The river rushed up in steam and a fog fell on Dale, and in the fog the dragon came on them and destroyed most of the warriors…Then he went back and crept in through the Front Gate and routed out all the halls, and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages…Later he used to crawl out of the great gate and come by night to Dale, and carry away people, especially maidens, to eat, until Dale was ruined and all the people dead or gone.  What goes on there now I don’t know for certain, but I don’t suppose any one lives nearer the Mountain than the far edge of the Long Lake now-a-days.”

image14erebor.jpg

Thorin is correct about this:  Dale is ruined and abandoned (you can see the remains of the town on the right hand side of this illustration) and the Mountain has only one inhabitant.

image15smaug.jpg

When Bilbo disturbs him and steals a cup, Smaug goes on a second rampage, flying as far south as Lake-town:

“Fire leaped from the dragon’s jaws.  He circled for a while high in the air above them lighting all the lake…Fire leaped from the thatched roofs and wooden beam-ends as he hurtled down and past and round again…Flames unquenchable sprang high into the night. “  (The Hobbit, Chapter Fourteen, “Fire and Water”)

image16laketown.jpg

And, even when Bard’s arrow brings him down, Smaug causes a final wave of destruction:

“Full on the town he fell.  His last throes splintered it to sparks and gledes.  The lake roared in.  A vast steam leaped up, white in the sudden dark under the moon.  There was a hiss, a gushing whirl, and then silence.  And that was the end of Smaug and Esgaroth…”

Just as certain parts of Europe were destroyed and their economies stunted by the Great War, we can hear, in Thorin’s words, that the same has happened to Dale and the Lonely Mountain:  with no dwarves and no men to make the “armour and jewels and carvings and cups”, not to mention the “most marvellous and magical toys”, the whole economy of the area to the north of the Long Lake was completely destroyed.  Survivors built up Lake-town, but no one dared to revive the trade which had once enriched an entire region.

image17laketown.jpg

And, as for the few remaining dwarves:

“After that we went away, and we have had to earn our livings as best we could up and down the lands, often sinking as low as black-smith-work or even coal-mining.” says Thorin.

Although Thorin dies in the struggle to regain what was lost, there is a happy ending of sorts for the dwarves.  With Smaug dead, they can finally return, as can men, and rebuild, just as Europe began to rebuild—Ypres restored both Cloth Hall and cathedral in time.

 

image18ypres

 

But the dragon would return and all too soon…

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

CD

Ugluk Was Here

14 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Language, Literary History, Military History

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Tags

Alan Lee, Alfred Waud, American Civil War, Angus McBride, Argonath, Belgium, Black Speech, cemeteries, Confederate, Egyptian monuments, First Virginia Cavalry, graffiti, Great War, Greek mercenaries, Greeks, Hildebrandt, John Howe, Journey to the Cross-roads, Kilroy, Kilroy was here, Literacy, Napoleon I, Orcs, Pompeii, quarry at Naours, Sauron, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Union, Virginia, World War I, World War II

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

One of our reasons for holding Tolkien’s work in such high esteem is that it’s so rich: practicing Sortes Tolkienses (see our earlier posting on this), we find innumerable subjects to write about.

In this posting, our eye was caught by this:

“The brief glow feel upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.” (The Two Towers, Book 4, Chapter 7, “Journey to the Cross-roads”)

crossroads.jpg

We had the feeling that we’d seen a statue something like this before—and we were curious whether JRRT had, too, and with a little mental rooting-around, we found this:

abusimbelengraving.jpg

It’s Egyptian (13th century BC), and has a head, but, not only is it monumental, and seated, but it has lots of “idle scrawls” on the bases and lower parts of its legs.

abusimbelgraffiti.jpg

What’s particularly interesting to us is that one piece of the graffiti is actually from some Greek mercenaries c. 600bc

hoplite1.jpg

main-qimg-9eddef3641e25892afa016888b808aa5-c.jpeg

As long as there has been a certain level of literacy, of course, there has been graffiti. The walls of ancient Pompeii (sealed in by the eruption of 79AD) are loaded with everything from election posters to the admiration of gladiators to personal insults.

gladiatorialstats.JPG

There’s so much, in fact, that this is our favorite:

antigraffiti.jpg

A translation of this might be: “I wonder/am in awe, wall, that, you, who are holding up so much boring writing, haven’t fallen down!”

Soldiers, in particular, seem prone to leaving messages behind—beginning with those 7th-c Greeks, but continuing throughout the centuries. When Napoleon I led an expedition to Egypt in 1798,

napegypt.jpg

his soldiers left their mark in more ways than one upon the landscape.

frenchinegyptgraf2.jpg

Recently discovered in a house in Virginia was a large collection of inscriptions from the soldiers, Union and Confederate, of the American Civil War.

Graffiti-House.jpg Graffiti House Wall and Chair.jpg unionsoldier.jpgAlfred R. Waudfirstva.jpg

(An irresistible footnote: the picture you see of the Confederate cavalry—actually the 1st Virginia—was made by one of the greatest Civil War artists, Alfred Waud (pronounced “woad”). He had been briefly detained by this unit and took the opportunity to sketch them from life. His sketch—with his notes—then went to his publisher in New York, who had a group of engravers ready to turn his sketch into a finished—and publishable—picture.1st-virginia-cavalry-halted-based-on-sketch-by-waud-harpers-sept-27-1862.jpg

For more on the process by which a sketch becomes a magazine illustration, see this link.)

Another recent discovery was a mass of inscriptions (something like 2000 of them) in an abandoned quarry at Naours, in northern France.

quarrynaours.jpg

6XYh68h5xHSK2-3026250-In_this_image_made_on_Feb_20_2015_showing_names_engraved_on_the_-a-32_1428320205858.jpg

These date from the Great War (World War I) and, in a sad way, parallel the epitaphs on the seemingly-endless graves in the seemingly endless military cemeteries in the same region and in southern Belgium.

greatwargraves1.jpg

Tyne Cot 3.jpg

And World War II brought us Kilroy, of the famous (and ubiquitous) “Kilroy was here”.

Engraving-of-Kilroy-on-the-WWII-Memorial-in-Washington-DC.jpg

American prankster soldiers doodled this everywhere they went.

kilroy-was-here-photo.jpg

We have written previously about literacy in Middle-earth: not uncommon among hobbits, it would seem, but much less so among the other peoples. As for orcs, be they Hildebrandt

captured_by_orcs.jpg

Mcbride,

mcba_orc.jpg

Howe

John Howe - Merry et Pippin prisonniers des orcs.jpg

Or Lee,

Alan Lee - Orcs (1).jpg

although the Black Speech was created for them and Sauron’s other creatures, we have no evidence (except for the Ring inscription) of any use of it as a writing tool by any of them.

Which leaves us free to imagine just what those “idle scrawls” might read like. How about:

LUGDUSH SMELLS LIKE MAN FLESH!

LAGDUF + MUZGASH = CLUELESS AND SHIRTLESS!

GORBAG LOVES SHELOB

SHAGRAT IS A SNAGA!

And, of course:

UGLUK WAS HERE

Thanks for reading! (And why not submit your own graffiti? We’d be glad to add them to our list!)

MTCIDC

CD

Armistice and Simbelmyne

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Allies, armistice, Armistice Day, barbed wire, Belgium, Christmas Truce of 1914, Eisenhower, Evermind, flamethrowers, France, German Government, Guy Fawkes Day, John McCrae, machine gun, maxim gun, military, military rifle, Paris, poisoned gas, poppies, Remembrance Day, Simbelmyne, tank, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, truce, Veterans' Day, Western Front, Woodrow Wilson, Word War I, WWI Trenches

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

“At the foot of the walled hill the way ran under the shadow of many mounds, high and green. Upon their western sides the grass was white as with drifted snow: small white flowers sprang there like countless stars amid the turf.

‘Look!’ said Gandalf. ‘How fair are the bright eyes in the grass! Evermind they are called, simbelmyne in this land of Men, for they blossom in all seasons of the year, and grow where dead men rest. Behold! we are come to the great barrows where the sires of Theoden sleep.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

simbelmynemounds

Like our bonus posting last week, for Guy Fawkes Day, this one is tied to a specific day, now called “Veterans’ Day” in the US, and “Remembrance Day” by our linguistic cousins around the world.

November 11th here was originally called “Armistice Day” when it was first declared by Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The change to “Veterans’ Day” came in 1954, but, to us, it would be good if it had remained as it was, both its name and what it commemorated, and President Eisenhower had chosen to add another holiday to the calendar, instead.

The armistice was, of course, the truce which marked the beginning of the end of World War I, the date and time—the 11th hour of the 11th day of 1918—agreed upon by commissions of the Allies and the Imperial German government who met in a railway car outside Paris in early November, after over a month of on-again-off-again negotiations. This was only a truce—the actual peace treaty was not agreed upon and didn’t come into effect until 10 January, 1920—but it did stop the fighting in the west almost immediately.

Armisticetrain_(slight_crop) Waffenstillstand_gr

The war to which it gave a permanent pause had been appalling in its losses: over 17 million people had been killed and 20 million wounded and the weapons used to kill 11 million soldiers had gone from the ordinary military rifle to the machine gun to barbed wire to poisoned gas to flamethrowers to the tank—and that was just on land.

Short_Magazine_Lee-Enfield_Mk_1_(1903)_-_UK_-_cal_303_British_-_Armémuseum

gassed

barbedwire

1280px-Sargent,_John_Singer_(RA)_-_Gassed_-_Google_Art_Project

flamethrower-10215292

tank-wire

In the process, it had driven men to dig 500 miles of trenches on the Western Front, where they lived a life of perpetual misery.

_77694555_sommetrench

Thus, the news, even of a truce, was the best of news to soldiers and civilians on both sides.

armistice

The price for that truce and for the eventual peace was almost too much to bear: all over northern France and southern Belgium seemingly endless, but necessary, cemeteries had gradually sprung up and, with the coming of peace, had been rationalized and formalized so that they looked like militarized civilian graveyards. To visit that area today is to understand, in some small way, what a horror that war was for those caught in it. And this is just the Western Front: there are many more burial places to be.

zonnebeke.passendale.tynecot.air_.dkv_

In 1921, people in the US began to wear little artificial poppies as a symbol of remembrance on 11 November and the custom was adopted abroad and still continues in Canada and Britain, at least. It is said that the custom was inspired by this poem, written by a Canadian soldier on the Western Front, John McCrae, in 1915. He had noted that poppies seemed to grow more quickly on ground which had been freshly turned—in the fighting and in the burials afterwards. And the image of the flowers, bright red as fresh blood, scattered across the fields was too powerful for a poet not to use, particularly a soldier-poet.

In_flanders_field_poppy_thumb

We here at Doubtful Sea want to commemorate all of the soldiers on both sides in this posting and wish that the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 had seen the end of the war, instead of four years and millions of deaths later.

Christmas-Day-Truce

And we offer, as Tolkien fans, not only the poppy, but the Evermind, the Simbelmyne, in remembrance.

Processed by: Helicon Filter; simbelmyneflower

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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