denethorthefirst is quite right about at least some of the Dwarves participating in the War of the Last Alliance against Sauron. I had forgotten the mentions in
Unfinished Tales. *My shame*
But I still disagree with denethorthefirst’s narrow definition:
The only function of the One Ring was to dominate (the bearers of) the other Rings of Power and to somehow enhance Saurons ability to dominate other wills.
My listing of various powers and abilities shown by the One Ring was to indicate that the One Rings shows powers not covered by this “narrow definition”.
I do not see that Sam’s listening in on the Orcs telepathically enables either Sam or Sauron to dominate the wills of those Orcs. The Orcs are not even bearers of other Rings of Power.
Throughout
The Lord of the Rings we see several characters tempted to control the Ring, but no-one tempted by an increased desire to submit himself or herself to Sauron’s will. Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo, Galadriel, Boromir, Saruman, and even Sam, are tempted to take the Ring for themselves, to use against Sauron, which is surely not Sauron’s will. (Unless you wish to suggest that Sauron is transmitting a suggestion to the bearer of the One Ring to reveal himself [or herself] as a trick, as Sauron expected to quickly overcome whoever now had the Ring, once that was revealed. That would be possible in some cases, but not in most.)
Nor is their even a hint, I believe, that Sauron was using his will through the One Ring especially to defeat either Elendil or Isildur in the War of the Last Alliance. Isildur is in the end overcome by his desire for the One Ring itself, when Isildur first names it his “precious”.
The Ring gave Sauron, from its forging, more power, but Tolkien is vague on what powers it gave him. This vagueness veils the effectiveness of any discussion of this matter. Your attempt to distinguish between
wielding the Ring and
mastering the Ring is an example of this. You do not know, no more than I, whether the One Ring was used to raise Sauron’s armies in the Second Age any more that it was in the Third, so far as we are told.
It does seem that Sauron was on the verge of defeating Gondor and perhaps two of the Elven lands without the One Ring, except for such powers as served as an “anchor” to bring him back to life and at least to most of his former power. But how much Sauron’s power at the end of the Third Age was due to his former possession of the Ring we are not told. It may be that the possession of twelve of the Lesser Rings was quite a lot in its own right.
Note some readers find it odd that the One Ring is not even mentioned in the accounts of the Fall of Númenor save when the spirit of Sauron takes up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr after the drowning of Númenor. Had the One Ring not been with Sauron at all during his captivity in Númenor but hidden in Barad-dûr? Well, at least in Letter 211 of
Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolkien wrote:
Though reduced to ‘a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind’, I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended.
So this tells us that in this time and place Tolkien imagines that Sauron, without the One Ring, would have little special power to persuade, as perhaps we should imagine him at the end of the Third Age. Yet Sauron has somehow persuaded hoards of Easterlings and Southrons to join him. Presumably we are to imagine that much of the power that he had put into the One Ring had returned to him.