As always, dear readers, welcome.

Sauron, although he rather rashly placed much of his power (as well as his life force) in what is, basically, a magic ring, has always struck me as rather a practical person when it comes to war and foreign affairs.  In order to conquer the West, he’s:

1. turned his rather bleak realm into a giant military camp

2. brought back the final destroyer of Arnor, the Witch King of Angmar, as his chief lieutenant

3. made treaties with peoples to the east and south to bolster his already extensive armies and cleverly turned pirates loose to raid the southern shores of Gondor to distract his opponents and force them to divide their forces

4. corrupted one of the West’s traditional allies, Saruman, turning him into a kind of “Mini Me”

 

5. weakened another, Rohan, through a spy in the king’s court, Grima, who has somehow turned that king into a prematurely-aged man

6. worked on the mind of the commander of Gondor, Denethor, using an ancient communications device, making him suspicious of his younger son and promoting a defeatist attitude

As well, he seems quite aware of what we call geo-politics, as we see in his demands at the Black Gate:

“ ‘The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret.  All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely.  West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains and the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs.  But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s and there his lieutenant shall dwell:  not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.”  (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

Reading this passage, however, I’m puzzled:

“Time passed.  At length watchers on the walls could see the retreat of the out-companies.  Small bands of weary and often wounded men came first with little order; some were running wildly as if pursued.  Away to the eastward the distant fires flickered, and now it seemed that here and there they crept across the plain.  Houses and barns were burning.  Then from many points little rivers of red flame came hurrying on, winding through the gloom, converging towards the line of the broad road that led from the City-gate to Osgiliath.”  (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor”)

As we know, JRRT himself had been a soldier, though perhaps a reluctant one,

and thus would have been well aware of the saying, sometimes attributed to Napoleon, that “an army marches on its stomach”.  In 1916, such an army needed massive supply dumps,

which needed railroads to bring food and ammunition to them.

From there, wagons

and, in time, early trucks,

then mules and horses would have taken supplies farther forward

and, from there, the troops themselves might have formed what were called “carrying parties”.

Image7:  carrying

(This is actually a “wiring party”, with its “screw pickets”, which were twisted into the ground and used to hold up the barbed wire, but it can stand in for a “carrying party”.  For more on “wiring parties”, see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_party  )

One fact alone might suggest how big the task of keeping the British Army supplied :  “By 1918, the British were sending over 67 million lbs (30 million kg) of meat to the Western Front each month.”  (This is from an article entitled “The Food That Fuelled the Front” from the Imperial War Museum website, which you can see here:  https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-food-that-fuelled-the-front  )

This was a vast, modern army, with all the modern technology available in 1918 to enable resupply (such supplying is called “logistics”).  Sauron’s army is of a much earlier time, its basis seemingly infantry, armed with swords, spears, and bows,

(Alan Lee)

assisted by a certain number of oliphaunts,

(Alan Lee)

horsemen,

(These are actually Mongols, but all the text says is “Before them went a great cavalry of horsemen moving like ordered shadows…”  The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”, leaving it up to us to imagine what they might have looked like.)

and perhaps a warband of wargs,

(Artist?)

yet its basic needs would have been the same as those of the British Army in which Tolkien served.

To provide a parallel a bit closer to The Lord of the Rings, we might imagine an earlier army, like the army of New Kingdom Egypt

as we might have seen it marching to fight the Hittites

at the Battle of Kadesh, in the summer of 1274BC. 

No oliphaunts or cavalry (or wargs) in support, but definitely chariots, maybe 2000 of them.

(Again, Angus McBride, one of my favorite military artists of the 20^th century). 

The Egyptian army of Rameses II

may have numbered about 20,000, with as many as 4,000 chariot horses, and here are some potential logistic figures for such an earlier army—

Thinking of water alone, the average modern horse will drink 5-10 gallons (19-38 ltrs) of water a day, depending on working conditions, and that same horse needs to eat 15-20 pounds  (7-9 kg) of hay.  An average present-day American eats about 5.5  pounds (2.5 kg) of food per day and drinks 2 quarts (2 ltrs) of water.  On the one hand, ancient Egyptians were somewhat smaller than we are and probably less well-fed to begin with, but, on the other, that water requirement is an average and doesn’t factor in  marching for miles on dusty summertime roads in the Middle East.

Could Rameses’ army have carried enough supplies with it for the long march (perhaps about 500 miles—about 805km)?  Rameses would have had available to him no trains or trucks, but the ancient Egyptians had carts (probably pulled by oxen, as were their plows)

and certainly used pack mules.

As to possible baggage camels,

there is a lot of scholarly argument about their use.  Although camel remains (a few depictions, bones, rope from camel hair) are there, there doesn’t appear to be any clear evidence for the use of camels as carriers until much later.  Food—the ordinary Egyptian diet was simple, including barley bread

and beer (also made from barley),

so large supplies of barley flour might be carried, but how to carry—and preserve–beer?  Water could be substituted, but could it be carried?  Or would the Egyptians have done as armies have done throughout history and foraged, picking up supplies of food and drink from the locals, willingly or unwillingly?  Both Rameses II’s and Sauron’s armies had horses, but add oliphaunts in Sauron’s, and all in need of fodder, this would include, in season, cutting grass

and, in and out of season, probably looting barns and granaries, as well.

Consider, then, Sauron’s armies and the Pelennor into which they had broken. 

We don’t know their numbers, but it’s clear that they are enormous, far outnumbering the defenders of Minas Tirith.   And this is what puzzles me.  Tolkien was certainly aware of such needs in general—as he once wrote:  “I am not incapable of or unaware of economic thought…” (letter to Naomi Mitchison, 25 September, 1954, Letters, 292).   And yet—

“It drew now to evening by the hour, and the light was so dim that even far-sighted men upon the Citadel could discern little clearly out upon the fields, save only the burnings that ever multiplied, and the lines of fire that grew in length and speed.”

Perhaps the army brought some provisions with it (Saruman and Sauron’s orcs seem to have had something like field rations, as we learn after they carry off Merry and Pippin), but, if the siege of Minas Tirith had proved to be a long one, what would such a vast host and its beasts have eaten, having destroyed the nearest source of food and fodder?  We’ve seen that Sauron was shrewd and showed a great amount of foresight in his pre-war preparations, so my only answer is a question:   did JRRT, who certainly had a taste for the dramatic moment–think of the way in which the Rohirrim appear at the edge of the Rammas Echor–

deliberately sacrifice economics for drama?  We’ll probably never know for certain, but, if you stand for a moment, on the wall of the first circle of Minas Tirith in the darkness, and see those fires spread across the Pelennor…

As always, thanks for reading.

Stay well,

If you have a yen for conquest, remember to pack a lunch (with carrots for your horse, of course),

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In the Star Wars fan world, there has been a lot of recent chatter about a Star Wars “What If?” film.  So far, it seems to be just chatter, but the speculation has gone in all sorts of directions and some very creative people have even produced potential posters, like this one—

with Anakin in his Darth Vader suit, which is real, but Obi Wan and Ahsoka as Imperial officers—a very grim idea.  (For more on possible scenarios, see:  https://thedirect.com/article/star-wars-what-if-disney-plus-2024  I think my favorite is the idea of Jar Jar Binks as a Sith lord—

see this especially silly version here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB4sKebTr5k  )

What Ifs are common in the world of fictions of all sorts, from Sci-Fi to Historical, and I’ll bet that you can immediately produce a few titles—from 1984

(a very complex “What If?” in which, unlike many of the genre, we don’t begin with actual history taking a left turn, as in something like some of Harry Turtledove’s books, where, for instance, the South has won the Civil War,

but a world in which something has changed things earlier, producing a series of three large warring states, at least one of which, Oceania, is a reflection of a kind of Stalinist UK)

to The Man in the High Castle,

as well as many more. 

It’s always an interesting approach to a story and, when well done, can be anything from entertaining to disturbing.  One which comes to mind as a dead failure, however, might begin with this:

“ ‘I have come,’ he said.  ‘But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.  I will not do this deed.  The Ring is mine!’ And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam’s sight.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 3, “Mount Doom”.)

(Alan Lee)

We all know what happens next.  Sauron is suddenly not so sure of his triumph:

“And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dur was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown.”

But then:

“Suddenly Sam saw Gollum’s long hands draw upwards towards his mouth; his white fangs gleamed, and snapped as they bit.  Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge.  But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust through its circle.”

And then:

“ ‘Precious, precious, precious!’ Gollum cried.  ‘My Precious!  O my Precious!’  And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell.  Out of the depths came his last wail Precious, and he was gone.”

(Ted Nasmith)

In a brief space, we’re confronted with not one, but two, What Ifs, but let’s deal with the second one first, as, after all, Gollum had actually had control of the Ring long before Frodo even became aware of it—for 478 years.  During that time, what had he done with it and himself?

1. he had murdered a friend to obtain it

2. taking up eaves-dropping and petty theft, he’d eventually been exiled from his people

3. finally, he had crept under the Misty Mountains, where he lived on a diet of fish and goblins (when he could catch one) until he lost the Ring (or, perhaps more correctly, the Ring lost him) 80 years before The Lord of the Rings.

The only use he seems to have had for the Ring all that time was as a kind of cloaking device.  I think that we can presume that, had he successfully escaped Sam and Frodo, he would have been quickly apprehended by Sauron’s agents and deprived of his Precious, and worse.

This leaves us with Frodo—and yet we shouldn’t forget the Ring’s other previous possessors.  First, there was Isildur, who cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand at the Battle of Dagorlad—only to have it betray him to orc archers at the Gladden Fields.  Perhaps he hadn’t time to do anything with it, having held it so briefly, it being only 2 years after Dagorlad, but Tolkien never shows him doing anything more than wearing it as a kind of trophy.

And then, of course, there is Bilbo, who, in fact, uses it rather as Gollum did, to disappear from time to time, both in the adventure to the Lonely Mountain and back again and in the years afterwards.  If a king who had actually defeated Sauron did nothing with the Ring’s power, what could one expect from a hobbit?

This brings us back to Frodo.  He is recorded as having put the Ring on only twice:  at Weathertop, when he was almost mortally wounded by one of the Nazgul, and, later, on Amon Hen, where he was terrified by the sudden attention of Sauron:

“And suddenly he felt the Eye.  There was an eye in the Dark Tower that did not sleep.  He knew that it had become aware of his gaze.  A fierce eager will was there.  It leaped towards him; almost like a finger he felt it, searching for him.  Very soon it would nail him down, know just exactly where he was.  Amon Lhaw it touched.  It glanced upon Tol Brandir—he threw himself down from the search, crouching, covering his head with his grey hood.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 10, “The Breaking of the Fellowship”)

The problem is that, as JRRT explains:

“[Sauron] rules a growing empire from the great dark tower of Barad-dur in Mordor, near to the Mountain of Fire, wielding the One Ring.

But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his own inherent power…pass into the One Ring.  While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced.  But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself:  he was not ‘diminished’.”

And yet—

“Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it.”

There is, however, a condition to this—

“If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place.”

At the same time:

“Also so great was the Ring’s power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the strength of any will (even his own) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it.” (draft of a letter to Milton Waldman, “late in 1951”, Letters, 214)

It appears, then, that the Ring enhances the power of him who holds it—but consider those who had, beyond Sauron—what power did any of them, besides Isildur, have?  And what power did Isildur have, when, faced with the Ring’s destruction, as Elrond tells us:

“ ‘Isildur took it, as should not have been.  It should have been cast then into Orodruin’s fire nigh at hand where it was made.  But few marked what Isildur did.  He alone stood by his father in that last mortal contest; and by Gil-galad only Cirdan stood, and I.  But Isildur would not listen to our counsel…

…and therefore whether we would or no, he took it to treasure it.  But soon he was betrayed by it to his death; and so it is named in the North Isildur’s Bane.  Yet death maybe was better than what else might have befallen him.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

If Gollum used it for burglary and Bilbo for concealment and Isildur is brought to his death by it—and might have fared worse, had he lived—what would have been the fate of Frodo, had he been able to retain the Ring, as he attempted, at the last minute, to do?  Heroic he might be, but with a strength to equal Sauron’s?

I suspect that the consequences would have been the same as those of the Gollum What If and as described by the Mouth of Sauron in his gloating threat to Gandalf when it was suggested that Frodo was in Sauron’s hands:

“And now he shall endure the slow torment of years, as long and slow as our arts in the Great Tower can contrive, and never be released unless maybe when he is changed and broken…” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

For all that Frodo suffers from the Ring before and after Gollum’s attack, better those sufferings than that possible What If.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Stay well,

Say with Faramir, “Not if I found it on the highway would I take it”,

And remember that, as always, there’s

MTCIDC

O