[CaptainofDespair]

A supply line of 600 miles through desolate landscape to an equally desolate battlefield…hmmm…can’t think of any example like that off the top of my head during a comparable period of our history.

I can think of several examples of long supply lines being maintained. The degree of success may vary in the individual cases, though. Napoleon maintained long supply lines (though at the very end of what was a several thousand mile long line) in both Egypt and in Russia. While he ended up losing both, that was more to his own faults and declining mindset than to the fault of his supply line. He could have realistically held both, but he made poor choices that ended up cutting them up. The Crusaders, a comparable period of time, managed to do much with a combination of stretched supply lines and 'living off the land' tactics.

While Mordor and Gondor were certainly no Levant, Ithilien could have been foraged in for some supplies, especially early in the campaign.And while Rhun and Mordor were desolate, Napoleon had managed to ship supplies (but his mistakes ruined any good that could have happened with the logistics) in both the cases of Egypt and Russia. The Witch-King had a smaller line of supply, then, and could thus do it as well (and I doubt he was as foolish as Napoleon in the case of logistics).

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Perhaps you think too little of them…

No, I give them credit where credit is due. But there are several decades between Angmar and Ithil, and I do not think they were quite the same force. I also think that you might be placing on them an aura of greatness that they in truth may not have had.

Is it really so very hard to believe that the prolonged presence of the Nazgûl could cause the inhabitants of Minas Ithil to start going out of their minds and fleeing in droves? The king wouldn’t know what to do because the city was not under attack, its people were just collectively going insane. After a fairly short time of this exposure, I think the more faint-hearted residents would start heading west. Given more time and the stout-hearted would start to have the urge as well. Eventually, I think that the only people in Minas Morgul would be the garrison soldiers. They too would have experienced their share of desertions, but we’ll give them some credit for bravery or a devotion to duty that was greater than their fear. The king still wouldn’t understand what was happening because nothing intelligible was happening. Undoubtedly he would send reinforcements, but they would suffer just like the rest of the troops. After two years of this process, I imagine that the garrison would be in utter shambles and reduced in strength. The Nazgûl would then summon up a strike force sufficient to storm the (probably ill-manned) walls one night, or they would induce some terror-stricken individual to open the gates for them…and PRESTO!! City fallen.

How imaginative. But where is that stout heartedness you earlier attributed to the Gondorians, and not just their soldiers? Hadn't they only decades before faced the Witch-King, who not only caused fear himself but infested the Barrows of Cardolan with evil spirits from Carn-Dum? Should not Gondor have had some sense of what was happening, then?

Now, how is two years good enough for the Gondorians to get over the shock of a "siege" and the possibility of attack from elsewhere, and yet not enough for them to come to grips with something they had recently just seen in the Wights, which was a comparable situation? And add to that they know about the Nazgul, or at least the Witch-King, and the properties he brings to the table.

I also think that this manner of conquest could go a long way toward explaining the unique properties of Minas Morgul. The rest of Mordor was not like that (although we admittedly don’t know what Barad-dûr was like, but Shagrat and Gorbag talk about serving in the city as if it is a unique experience). I think this haunting manner of conquest could explain a lot about why the city turned out the way it did.

I think the properties of Morgul are not so much changed by the manner of conquest, but by the inhabiting that followed. The Nazgul, I agree, can haunt places. But I do not think their effect is enough to drive the 'stout' defenders of Gondor, especially at this time, into abandoning the city of Ithil. Abandonment, I think, does not fit with the use of "Siege", as well.

How? His passage was blocked.

There are other ways into Gondor besides the Morgul pass, ya know.