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Charge!

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, The Rohirrim

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16th Lancers, Aliwal, Australian Light Horse, Australians, Balaclava, Beersheba, Cavalry, Charges, Great War, Light Brigade, Palestine, Rohirrim, Scots Greys, The Lighthorsemen, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Turks, Warhorse, Waterloo

As always, dear readers, welcome.

In an addition to an entry in Letters, the main portion of which has rather a murky history (see 217-218), but which the editor dates as “presumably written circa 1966”, Tolkien says that several features of The Lord of the Rings “still move me very powerfully”.  These features include being “most stirred by the sound of the horses of the Rohirrim at cockcrow”.

As this is one of our favorite parts of the book,

 

image1

we would absolutely agree, but, as is so often the case, both with JRRT and with ourselves, we wondered why.

The easiest answer is that it’s a highly-dramatic moment:  the main gate of Minas Tirith is giving way under the blows of Grond, the orcs are about to pour in, and it looks like Aragorn and his companions won’t appear in time to save the situation.

image2grond.png

We have been following the Rohirrim, of course, from their muster to their march

image3roh.jpg

to their meeting with Ghan-buri-Ghan,

image4ghan.jpg

so the build is two-fold:  the attack, which is completely focused on breaking in, and the approach of the Rohirrim.  Thus, when it looks darkest, the charge is like sunlight breaking through heavy cloud.

image5charge.jpg

This is a beginning, we thought, to why, but could there have been another reason for JRRT?

When Tolkien, growing up, thought of cavalry charges, he probably saw, in his mind’s eye, the glorious mounted attacks of Britain’s past, like the Scots Greys at Waterloo

 

image6scot

or the 16th Lancers at Aliwal

image7aliwal.jpg

or the Light Brigade at Balaclava.

image8balaclava.jpg

In all of these, soldiers in bright-colored coats waved swords and lancers and dashed fearlessly against the enemy.  Even his toy soldiers would have had that same devil-may-care look

image9britains.jpg

as did the real cavalry of his childhood,

image10aqueenslancers.jpg

but, when 1914 and the Great War came, soldiers put away those bright colors and put on khaki.

image10twentyfirst.jpg

But did that wild courage have to be put away, as well?  In 1914, there were a few moments when even mud-colored mounted men had a moment of glory.

image11attack.jpg

This wasn’t to last—at least on the Western Front and a major reason was this—

image12maxim.jpg

(Here’s a LINK to a clip from the film Warhorse, which shows the effect in rather a symbolic way, thank goodness!  We love horses and mourn their terrible losses through all of world history—they never asked to be part of human violence and, so often, their fate was to die because of it.  We also think that it’s just as well that the commander of this imaginary attack didn’t survive it—it’s absolutely inept, both in conception and its carrying-out and he would deserve to have been court-martialed.)

So, instead, those men dismounted and became infantry, fighting from hole in the ground to hole in the ground.

image13trench.jpg

This was the world which JRRT

image14ajrrt.jpg

knew:  heavy guns, gas, and the rattle of machine guns, no place for wide double ranks of sabre-wavers.

image14charge.jpg

There was at least one bright moment, but not on the Western Front.  Instead, it was in far-off Palestine, where, on 31 October, 1917, Australians and their horses swept over a line of Turkish trenches  at Beersheba in a charge very reminiscent of the 19th -century world.

image15beersheba.jpg

Ironically, these were not cavalry at all, but Australian Light Horse—mounted infantry—who, lacking swords or sabres or lances, attacked using their long bayonets, instead.

image16alh.jpg

(You can see this charge reenacted wonderfully in the 1987 Australian movie, The Lighthorsemen, one of our very favorite films of the Great War.

image17poster.jpg

Here’s a LINK to the charge scene, before you see the whole film—but we recommend that you see that charge in context.)

On the whole, however, modern war had become one big, bloody ditch,

image18trench.jpg

and victory came in mud-color and mass industrial slaughter.  Perhaps it was a relief to imagine another world, where brave men in armor, mounted on flying horses, still had a place?

image19ro.jpg

As always, thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

Charge! The End?

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

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

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Adventure, Bataclava, Bigelow, British, British Heavy Brigade, Cavalry, Cawnpore, Charges, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Crimean War, French, Funckens, Gandalf, Helm's Deep, John Ford, Minas Tirith, Oliphaunts, Prussian, Remington, Rohirrim, Rossbach, Russian, Schreyvogel, seige, Stagecoach, surreneder, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Trostle Farm, Warhorse, Waterloo, Western, William Simpson

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

In our last, we were discussing film music, where it comes from and what it does. This brought us, as always, it seems, back to JRRT. In that post, we talked about the “Shire theme”. In this, we want to talk not about a theme, but about a scene, one we have mentioned before, the charge of the Rohirrim and the attempted raising of the siege of Minas Tirith.

gondorattacked rohirrimformup

Although, strictly speaking, what is happening to Minas Tirith is simply a frontal assault, not a siege in the classic sense. Although, seen in this illustration (by the wonderful husband and wife team of the Funckens), they may look the same—

funckenssiegeupclose

in a formal siege, you surround a town/fortress

siegediggingin

call on the place to surrender

The-Entrance-Into-Belfort-Of-The-German-Commander-Bearing-The-Flag-Of-Truce-4th-November-1870-1884

use your heavy weapons to bombard the place

catapault42cm

Drive the defenders back from their outer works

William Simpson - The Attack on the Malakoff 1855

And then call upon the defenders to surrender—which, often they do (fewer Alamos than myth would tell you)

surrender4

But, if not, a final—usually costly—attackSiege_of_Badajoz,_by_Richard_Caton_Woodville_Jr

march6

and, potentially, the massacre of all—or at least all of the garrison–inside. (In Jackson’s LoTR, the Orcs are certainly not taking prisoners as they break into Minas Tirith).

The charge of the Rohirrim, though, brought to mind other charges, such as the charge of the Prussian cavalry against the French/Allied army at Rossbach, in 1757—

Schlacht_bei_Roßbach1

or the French and British cavalry charges at Waterloo, 1815—

cavwaterloo1 ChargeofthelightBrigade

or those _other_ charges at the battle of Balaclava, 1854, that of the French 4th Chasseurs d’Afrique

Chasseurs_d'Afrique_à_Balaclava

or of the British Heavy Brigade, which drove the Russian cavalry from the British camp.

balaclava-scots-greys-1200

Those last two remind us, of course, of one of our favorite adventure movies, the 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade

charge1

It is not so authentic in look as the 1968 movie of the same name,

Charge+of+the+Light+Brigade+movie+poster+2

and, in fact, the film states at its opening that it’s only loosely based on actual historical events (including not only the charge, but the 1857 massacre at Cawnpore—which, in reality, occurred some three years after the Crimean War battle). It also beefs up the Russian defense—adding non-existent earthworks, for instance. Here’s the movie’s view

1225664651_the-charge-of-the-light-brigade_00016

and here’s William Simpson’s near-contemporary illustration (Simpson arrived after the battle, but must have talked to survivors and certainly could have seen the terrain).

William_Simpson_-_Charge_of_the_light_cavalry_brigade,_25th_Oct._1854,_under_Major_General_the_Earl_of_Cardigan

All of these charges were directed at enemy forces on an open battlefield. The attack of the Rohirrim actually comes from a different scenario, one which is based upon a theme familiar to those who have seen American westerns: the arrival of the cavalry in the nick of time.

In this scenario, someone is trapped and surrounded—or at least persistently assaulted by a more numerous enemy—the classic is an attack upon circled wagons

frontier-wagon-circle

The crisis comes and it looks like those attacked are about to be overwhelmed

wagon-box-fight-1867-granger

but, at the last minute, help arrives—the cavalry, bugles sounding, guidons waving (although that illustrated in this vidcap is the 1885 pattern and the film from which this comes takes place in 1880—then again, the uniforms are a bit odd, too—here’s Remington’s and Schreyvogel’s more accurate views, as well) rides fearlessly to the rescue.

Stagecoach_216Pyxurz SCHREYVOGEL_Charles_Cavalry_Charge_1905_Wadsworth_Athenaeum_source_Sandstead_d2h_ remingtoncav

After sorting through more than 50 westerns, we believe that the movie from which our first image comes is probably the source of the modern idea of the arrival of the cavalry—see this clip from John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939)

CLIP

This happens twice, of course, in The Lord of the Rings, first at Helm’s deep, when Gandalf arrives—

helms-deep gandalfarrives

and again, as we began, at Minas Tirith. It’s interesting, however, to see that, in this second example, the cavalry rescue is not so successful, since there are those oliphaunts we discussed in an earlier posting—

mumakil_by_cg_warrior-d4muefu

In our world, it wasn’t giant oliphaunts who eventually defeated cavalry and drove them to the edges of the battlefield, where they lasted a little longer, but this

maximwarhorse

as you can see in this clip from Warhorse.

CLIP

And it’s for the best, really. It’s bad enough that we humans engage in violent actions without dragging the rest of the animal kingdom into it…

trostle-farm

(A few of the 80 horses lost by Bigelow’s 9th MA Battery at the Trostle Farm, 2 July, 1863—and, as a sad ps, 25 horses were killed or so badly injured that they were put down at the filming of the 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade—this so shocked those in Congress that a law for the protection of animals in films was passed to prevent future harm).

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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