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20,000 is the standing army trained,equipped and ready for battle. If Theoden had called for every male of correct age and ability he could certainly have collected more.
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Yes, in a 'full mobilisation' as I said. =]
The armies of Middle-Earth were indeed quite small, something I've always noticed as well... even countries like Gondor, tough countries who relied heavily on their military strength to survive (any country can only exist as long as it can maintain itself military; in Gondor's case, they had to do this constantly), seem to have had relatively smaller numbers of fighting men.
Clearly, as Gondor was quite a militarised country as we know, its army would not have been small relative to its size. Actual populations in Middle-Earth must have been small as well, then -- as they were indeed in the Middle-Ages. William the Conquerer defeated Harold with an estimated 8,000 men -- Harold had a thousand or so less -- and for that number, he spent a long time recruiting around France, Denmark and even Italy.
We are talking about a Medievalish sort of society, after all, so I would probably guess that the sort of troop numbers and populations would be similar to those of a period perhaps rather later than 1066; 8,000 is a pretty small army, considering the length of the time of its preparation, even by Middle-Earth standards (although obviously not by the standards of 1066).
Then again, though, there
were instances where army sizes were said to be very great, greater considerably than has ever been common in our world.
And his host had grown great, so great that the plain of Anfauglith could not contain it...
Morgoth's Orcs must have increased in number exponentially after the Nirnaeth. Anfauglith was a damn large piece of land. His army must have counted in the millions; the Valinorin army that defeated it would have been very sizeable as well.
(Valinor is one place I would expect there to be a lot of people, by the way; the Eldar could have children as much as they desired to do so, in a sheltered land where no-one ever died or failed to prosper, and after thousands of years of this stableness a large population would have been built up. Elves don't reproduce to the same extent as we do, but nonetheless.)
Sorry if this has veered horribly off-topic, but then try to take it all as a mere discussion on the army sizes of the Late Third Age if you like... [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]