A military historian on the Siege of Gondor

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I also had an objection to another one of his premises, that an army of orcs would need extensive training to create cohesion. But I wonder if that is such a big factor in orc armies as it is in Men armies. Firstly, the force that seems to consistently drive all of the "professional" orc armies is not comraderie or respect or good military habits or any other positive thing, but the fear of what their Boss (and Boss's Boss, etc) will do in the event of failure. As long as there is central control exerted over the army, they would rather die than face the consequences of not giving their 100% best effort.

That would apply in "garrison" and peacetime operations, perhaps even on the march. But the 'cohesion" BD is talking about is how a unit, or individual orc, responds to the shock of battle- the point at which the natural flight response has to be overcome by some sort of artificial conditioning. Certainly this can be done with vast conscript armies using fear (think Red Army in WW2); the problem with Saruman's (and Sauron's) armies in the movies is that there aren't nearly enough officers. This sort of organization only holds together by having a very full chain of command; you just can't place an undifferentiated company of 3-500 under one officer and expect it to hold. (In the Napoleonic wars, where nearly all the troops were conscripts, it was standard tactics for skirmishers and riflemen to pick off the NCOs and officers, for precisely that reason. And a British battalion of that time had a c-o-c running down to corporals in charge of just 10 men (not unlike the Romans).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

There could also have been better trained units; perhaps Ugluk's was one such, it would make sense for Saruman to send something above average for such an important mission.

This was so; in unpublished writing Tolkien said that Ugluk was captain of Saruman's scouts and you get the impression that his company were sort of Isengard's Force Recon. Grishnakh had a similar role (explicitly stated) in the service of Mordor.

[Snowdog]

This thread was a fascinating read! Woorthy of preservation!