Quote:
Originally Posted by Zigûr
I believe that in real life casualties were very high among such forces despite their formidable training and weapons, and this would seem to suit Sauron's callous disregard for life. However, perhaps someone who is more of a medievalist than I am can suggest a less modern alternative to whatever Professor Tolkien was musing upon when he made his observations about "trained Orcs" being utilised in this manner.
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I had not wanted to answer this as I don't possess the expertise to answer the question with a sufficient degree of reliability. However, since everyone else seems gripped with the same uncertainty, I will take a stab at it.
I don't believe that there is a good direct parallel with the German
Stoßtruppen (<-- gratuitous German thrown in to make people think I know what I'm talking about) in the Medieval era(s) because the methods and tools of war were so utterly different. There were certainly corps of professional soldiers that existed in the Medieval world, such soldiers gaining greater social acceptance, mainly in the Islamic world although not exclusively so. However, that being said, the soldiers of a culture tended to be trained in a similar way to do similar things with only limited specialization.
This is the point where my knowledge grows potentially flimsy...but taking sieges as our setting, since in a way that is the closest circumstance to World War I warfare, I do not know of a particular group of soldiers being given systemic training on particular methods of siege assault that made that group of soldiers particularly more effective than other groups. I am sure that a dissemination of knowledge took place, but I would not describe it as being on a systemic level and I don't think that it was exclusive to one particular sub-group.
I think, as has been mentioned, life in Morder among the orcs is a bit of the 20th Century dropped into Middle-earth.