[The Saucepan Man]

If either Sauron's or Saruman's orcs had succeeded in getting Merry and Pippin to their respective masters, the two poor Hobbits, not having the Ring, would probably have been tortured for information and then killed.

And then, in all likelihood, the Huorns wouldn't have turned up at Helm's Deep, the Ents wouldn't have attacked Isengard, Aragorn wouldn't have been able to reveal himself using the Palantir of Orthanc, the Witch King wouldn't have been killed, Faramir would have died with his father ... and so on.

So, on the whole it was probably a pretty good thing that the orcs quarreled ampngst themselves and were then overrun by Eomer and his men.

Other than their existence as general bad guys, one of the most important abilities of orcs was their ability to quarrel in any given situation. This faciliated Merry and Pippin's escape and probably saved them from being unwittingly killed by Eomer and co. It also assisted Frodo and Sam in getting into Mordor through Cirith Ungol.

Perhaps if Sauron had made the orcs more agreeable chaps ... [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]