How Do You Envision Middle-Earth?

[Bill Ferny]

Luinalatawen, at first glance I thought that was a movie still, but after looking at it a bit closer, it appears to be airbrush, which leads me to believe that this picture could very well be concept art. Great link!

Rumil, good point about the ritual nature of medieval battles. From the late 12th century onward it was more beneficial to capture a knight and his chattels than kill him out right, as he could be ransomed for a hefty profit (and his horse, armor and weapons wouldn’t have to be scrubbed free of blood and grey matter). The conduct of a typical siege was almost an entirely scripted affair, each major player in the siege acting out customary roles that bordered on the ceremonial. I doubt that the forces of evil would be so courteous, or that a horde bent on genocide would worry about collecting revenue from those they wished to exterminate.

However, there are examples of less ritualistic battles during the medieval period that play out very differently. After all, not every battle pitted European “gentlemen” against each other.

I was thinking more along the lines of how the Battle of Hastings panned out, a longer than usual affair that can serve in contrast.


(Calvary is crowned king at the Battle of Hastings, from the Bayeux Tapestry)

According to Joseph Dahmus, whose depiction of that battle in Seven Decisive Battles of the Middle Ages is one of the better researched ones out there:

William started his vanguard up the slope about nine in the morning. Once his light-armed foot soldiers had reached a point in their march up the hill where they felt their arrows might be effective, they let fly. Against an enemy largely concealed behind shields and other protective devices, these arrows did little damage, and little more was worked on by the pikemen and spearmen with their missiles. By this time the English had begun to retaliate with everything they could throw or shoot - axes, javelins, stones tied to sticks, arrows - and they did this with such abandon that the Bretons to William’s left broke in disorder and turned back down the hill. The panic of the Bretons prompted some of the English to hurry down the hill after them in the hope of decimating them in their confused flight. William sensed the critical nature of the situation and quickly moved in his horsemen to block the English in their pursuit, a maneuver which not only saved the Bretons from disaster but also caught a good number of English in a trap from which none escaped. A number of William’s knights who had penetrated the Anglo-Saxon formation, including the famed barb Taillefer, were slain.

This incident is one of the few details about the battle which the chroniclers describe. Although the fighting went for eight or nine hours, that is, until dusk, and at a furious pace, the reader is left to guess what precisely transpired. It appears probable that the combat assumed the character of a melee - a general, confused, hand-to-hand struggle between groups and individuals – the greater part of the battle taking place on the slope in front of the shield wall through which the Saxon warriors pushed to close with the enemy below. We are told that both Harold’s brothers fell early in the battle. William was himself so hotly engaged that he had three horses killed under him. At one point in the fighting the cry went up that the duke had been slain, a development which would have brought a quick end to Norman resistance, for the tapestry shows Williams raising his helmet and shouting to his men that he was still very much alive.

The French chroniclers, possibly in an effort to explain Norman retreats or even their eventual victory, say that on several occasions – three according to William of Poitiers - William employed the tactic of a feigned retreat. He then counterattacked with deadly effect when the English mistook the retreat for a defeat and advanced too far ahead of their defenses. Some analysts disagree. So experienced a warrior as Harold, they maintain, would not thrice have been duped by the same stratagem, especially since the English from their shield wall enjoyed a good view of the battlefield. The analysts also doubt the ability of William to conduct such a difficult maneuver. Others accept William of Poitiers’ words at face value and insist that the Norman army was so well disciplined that I could have managed a feigned retreat. The slow, cautious advance of the Saxons in front of their protective shield wall would have provided William and his knights sufficient time to regroup their “retreating” foot soldiers for an advance.

As the battle wore on without a decisive turn and dusk began to settle, William grew increasingly apprehensive. Unless he could win the battle before night fell, the following morning would find his tired army facing fresh Englishmen who would be coming up during the night. So, it is said, he gave the order for one last general assault and this succeeded. The shield wall crumbled and , worse, Harold was slain. Even yet all the fighting was not over. As the English fell back and scattered into the darkening forest, some housecarls turned on their Norman pursuers and slew a good number of William’s bravest men before he hurried up and drove off the last of them. In the end, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle aptly puts it, “the French had possession of the place of slaughter” (105-107).

(Interactive map.)



(Is that a lady in that shield wall? Actually, that may have happened.)

Another example, the Battle of Hattin (4th of July, 1187), pitted the Latin King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, against the greatest Muslim of history, Saladin. Saladin employed his light calvary to their greatest effect by harassing the Latin army, much larger than his own, with hit and run tactics as the Latin column advanced. His horse, at this point, never engaging outright, but he used his mounted archers to increase the suffering of the Latins already sweltering in the desert heat. By the time King Guy reaches the Horns of Hattin, his army is mad with thirst. The morning of the battle, Guy’s foot soldiers are so desperate for want of drink, and not thinking straight due to Saladin providing them with a sleepless night, they broke ranks and made a mad dash for the Sea of Galilee, temptingly sparkling in the first rays of morning. Saladin’s calvary slaughters them with ease. Raymond of Tripoli attempts to save the situation (?) by charging into Saladin’s horse, but he and his men shot straight through them, and for some reason (which is hotly contested) he simply left the battlefield and returned to Tripoli. What follows is typical of most medieval calvary battles: the Christians and Muslims make charge after charge at each other, each charge followed by a brief mounted melee, then they re-organize to do it all over again with dismounted knights on both sides hurriedly procuring themselves a new mount. In the end, due to exhaustion (and probably, I’m convinced, a bit of treachery on the part of Raymond of Tripoli), the Latins lost, all their nobles captured (except, of course, for Raymond), most sold into slavery, and every Templar and Hospitaller beheaded, though they had started the engagement with superior numbers. Neither Saladin nor Guy took a defensive posture. In Guy’s case, most of his infantry was annihilated in the morning, and Saladin didn’t employ foot soldiers during this engagement. (For the best descriptions of this battle see: The Life of Saladin by Beha Ed-Din, De Expugatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, translated by James Brundage in The Crusades: A Documentary History, edited by Joseph Stevenson.)


(Battle at the Horns of Hattin from a 15th century painting; there was no plate armor at the real battle.)

Compare these to the battles at the Fords of Isen as described by Tolkien. In the first engagement, Théodred encounters the vanguard and scatters it, but when he moves on to attack the main host he finds them in a defensive posture. Obviously, Théodred throws his forces against the main body, but the forces of Saruman threaten to encircle his force from the west. Théodred wisely uses the advantage of his mounted troops and effects a retreat. Then he does something utterly irrational, at least for someone with the instincts of a horseman. He attempts to encamp his forces at the Fords without the benefit of a walled fortification (I did notice that there were apparently earthwork forts, raised areas of land without walls, at the Fords), and, what’s more, he divides his forces on either side of the river. Is it any wonder that “disaster came”?


(Too kewl to looz.)

Now, off their horses, divided, and quickly being surrounded by an enemy that vastly outnumbers them, the Dunlending horsemen and the orcish wolfriders fell on the picketed horses, killing and scattering them. Now the Rohirrim don’t even have their horses anymore, and in a blink of the eye, all the Rohirrim on the east bank are swept away. In essence, Théodred divided and conquered himself, and paid for it at the edge of an orc-man’s axe.

Elfhelm then arrives in time to rescue Théodred's corpse and the remnants of his force. However, in the re-organization, Grimbold and Elfhelm make the very same mistake, Grimbold taking up position on western end, Elfhelm on the east. “All went ill, as most likely I would have done in any case.” Aye, but not for the reason Tolkien provides: “Saruman’s strength was too great.” True, Saruman’s forces were great, but an enemy that leaves itself piecemeal, and negates its only real advantage, would be defeated by a much smaller force regardless. We see Elfhelm, in charge of horse, taking “up his position” and acting “as a screen”, basically sitting still, doing something that any one with horse sense wouldn’t do. Of course, such tactics would be natural for a modern army that would be able to sit in ambush and maneuver separate units, but not for a medieval army without land lines, radios or binoculars. How exactly Elfhelm was to “descry” the east side of the river, or keep track of the activities on the west side is beyond me. With relative ease, the wolfriders drive between Elfhelm and Grimbold, and surround Elfhelm’s horsemen, who are sitting still, of course. The result: both Elfhelm and Grimbold are scattered, to be policed up by Gandalf a day latter.

The difference between the historical engagements and what is described by Tolkien is significant. The Saxons are the ones in the defensive posture, and William negotiates his mounted soldiers and infantry for effect. Both sides do not, nor can they due to the typical chaos of the medieval battle, separate their forces. Tolkien places the Rohirrim in a defensive posture, taking from them their primary advantage of maneuverability, and divides their forces. Saladin uses his maneuverability to harass the Latin army, until that army is driven insane by the horrendous conditions that Saladin manipulates. Maneuverability is the key for the mounted soldier, and if the battle goes sour, the best course of action is to turn and flee. (Thus the importance of the walled fortification that provides a place which to flee.) Even though the Rohirrim were greatly outnumbered, their first instinct as horsemen would not have been to place themselves in a defensive posture, but to use their maneuverability to greatest effect. For example, just prior to the first Crusade, during what is usually called the Pauper Crusade, even though the hodge-podge army of Christians vastly outnumbered the Turks, the Turks simply harried the Christian army into oblivion.

Another interesting battle from history demonstrates the utter disaster that results from a mounted army attempting to stand still without the benefit of a walled fortification. As chronicled by Jean De Joinville, King Saint Louis IX and his army, after winning at the Battle of Mansourah (AD 1250, I think), fell ill from drinking water out of a Nile tributary that was polluted by the corpuses of those who had fallen during said battle. Suffering terribly from scurvy and dysentery, and disadvantaged due to their encampment along a tributary that blocked any means of escape, the Sultan’s army was able to surround the enfeebled horse soldiers who attempted to defend themselves with hastily prepared wooden palisades from their gutted galleys. However, the Saracens used Greek fire to do away with the defenses, and roundly defeated the French, capturing the majority of the sickened army, including the Good King Louis. The whole episode was a tribute to the old adage: “Haste makes waste.” The Crusaders were hoping for a quick victory by driving south and capturing Cairo, but in their haste they neglected to consolidate their gains by taking the time to build adequate fortifications. In addition, they over extended themselves in an unfamiliar territory of confusing mazelike tributaries. The Saracens simply used their knowledge of the Nile tributaries to surround Louis’ army that had been brought to a standstill by futile efforts to cross the tributary and the crippling affects of disease. (Life of Saint Louis, trans. Margaret Shaw.) No calvary man can win by standing still.


(What French knights would have looked like during the time of King Saint Louis IX, from the Maciejowski Bible)

All in all, I’m not too impressed with Tolkien’s depiction of battle. I think his story would have been better if he had beefed up on some military history.

In regards to Edoras… I guess I like my medieval fantasy down and dirty.



I bet I could build one of those for the wife and kids (and for the cow and goat too). I wonder if the privy is inside or outside?

[ May 05, 2003: Message edited by: Bill Ferny ]