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Hahaha... Well, I can imagine that Wellington needed a lot of "stiff upper lip" when Blücher told him that iin confidence. Well, well, I'll try not to anger the wights but it is an interesting battle. The Prussians under Blücher were driven across the river Katzbach and Blücher gets an idea: "We'll cross the river and strike at the French right flank!" Said and done, the following morning his troops start marching in the heavy rains, the visibility is almost zero, one could only see a few meters ahead. Everything seems to be going fine, they are approaching the river but there is a yet unknown problem, the French commander ahs decided to do exactly the same thing but started of a few minutes before his adversary. This meant disaster, as the French are straggling to get up from the steep river bank they see the Prussians approaching. After a short tumult, the wet and tired Frech are driven back but the rear forces keep trying to cross and aPrussian cavalry charge mows them down turning it into a French route. By the end of the battle, Blücher knows two things about it, 1 That it ahs been fought. 2 That they have probably won since they had not yet been captured and that the fire was steadily moving away. When he learns that the French lost 15 000 in an uneven exchange agaisnt 300 Prussians, he sais to his chief of Staff, Moltke (not THE Moltke): "Well then, now it is only to convince everybody how ingeniously this was planned." This I tell you to illuminate the difficulties that arise when you try to be a commander, you have no control. Sorry if my last posts were rather rambling but I can't resist it. If anyone thinks that I am talking to unlistening ears, amking long and (too) unorganized posts, tell em and I will try to fix it. "To write the history of a battle is like writing the history of a dance!" (Yet again, Wellington, this time in a rather contemptous tone

Anyway, on slighting... Well you could in theory right but I still have to disagree. Slightings are used when after a long siege you want to storm a castle by surprise. A storming of a castle was an extremely bloody and messy affair for both sides, usually carried out by volunteers who got great shares of the booty for it. That is something that teh white council did not havewhich is why I think that it was reduced to almost nothing before it was stormed, in which case the walls would have been downed before it came to an assault. Also slighting is based upon the in the 17th century commonly used tactics of digging trenches closer and closer to the castle in question that was invented ebcause of the use of muskets and cannons which Sauron did not posess. Moreover, in that case Gandalf would have told Aragorn about the threat from Isengard, the use of explosives in a siege and then he would not ahve been so surprised, no?

Yes those are the foundations of guerilla warfare and one has to notice that many of the emn fighting there ahd once lived in Ithilien, before it was taken by the Enemy. This makes it impossible to accredit Thorongil with the invention of the guerilla war. By the way, good ol' Alexander's way of fighting was pretty common at the time, I wouldn't call it Guerilla fighting, rather probing and "teaser" attacks. This is becasue it was not conducted in a defensive war in a land once posessed but now occupied by an enemy and simply standard military procedure. Indeed, in the strictest interpretation of the word we couldn't even call Faramir a guerilla fighter since he was a commander of an armed force, sent into the lands with the mission of raiding and not the leader of a local band of resisters, but that's just being puritan.

I cannot agree that it was a great Gondorian strategy since these operations were always risky and costly. By the time of the war of the Ringthere was no chance of winning the war by military means and thus I would see the force as a drainer of well needed men and resources (not to mention commander, what if Faramir would have been killed) in pointless engagements. Of course it was a huge benefit that so amny men earned combat experience but it was taken over a limit when the raids were conducted even when they were exxcpecting an attack in the nearest days. My humble opinion, by the ay, if you ahven't noticed, I'm back!

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