Talk:Battle of the Pelennor Fields

Notes:

• Contrary to popular belief, the name given to the inhabitants of Gondor, "Gondorians" is incorrect. Originally hailing from the island kingdom of Numenor, their correct name is Numenorians.

• Look you fool; the original colonists/refugee Numenorians who founded Gondor after Numenor was destroyed could be called Numenorians because they lived there, but the inhabitants that were there 3,000+ years later were not. For example, Elendil, Isildur, Anarion, and the soldiers of Gondor seen fighting at the Battle of Dagorlad when Sauron is first defeated, are "first generation" Gondorians: they came from Numenor, and many had lived there, but were part of the new nation of Gondor. But by Third Age 3019 (3019 years later), they could no longer be called "Numenorean". They were of Numenorean descent, but the more common term for this is "Dunedain"="Man of the West" (Dun=west, Edain=Men, Numenor was the furthest West mortal land until its destruction). This term of course could apply to anyone descended from Numenorean realms-in-exile: namely, the sister-realm of Gondor, Arnor.

Case-in-point, Aragorn and the Rangers of the North are the last survivors of Arnor, the north-kingdom. Thus, they are also "Dunedain"; in fact, Aragorn is repeatedly refered to in the books as "Dunadan" ("westman") notably by Bilbo. So without question, these men were Dunedain, and thus also "Numenoreans".

>>>>Arnor and Gondor used to be one big kingdom ruled by the High-King Elendil, before Sauron killed him in the final battle (Isildur was also briefly High-King). Elendil was the leader of the Numenorean survivors. Thus, all the inhabitants of Elendil's realm were "Numenoreans" (for the first generation anyway). When the kingdom politically split into Arnor and Gondor, the inhabitants of both countries were still both called "Numenoreans". Thus to refer to late Third Age Gondorians as "Numenoreans" would exclude the fact that they aren't the only Numenorean descendants. But that is not the main reason your reasoning is wrong:

"Contrary to popular belief, the name given to the inhabitants of Gondor, "Gondorians" is incorrect."

The inhabitants of Gondor in the 3019th year of the Third Age are correctly named "Gondorians". Only the original founders of Gondor, the first generation, were also called "Numenoreans". By the later date, they were "Gondorians". I am now going to go through this entire wiki and replace every improper "Numenorean" insertion you made with their original wiki: "Gondorians".

Calling the Third Age Gondorians "Numenoreans" is like calling the 20th century Scots "Irishmen", because their ancestors came to Scotland from Ireland. Ausir 12:44, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Can any of you folks cite a reference from Tolkien to the term "Gondorian"? I'm not trying to dispute it, I just want to be able to commit one way or the other. It's certainly not a term as frequently and clearly used as "Rohirrim". --Aranel 00:35, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I found this change on August April 14, 2005:

"The Forces 1

Note 1 : There cannot have been 200,000 orcs because the Host of the West (6000 strong) was outnumbered eleven or twelve times by the Army in the Black gate (around 70,000 strong) in the Battle of the Morannon .Gandalf and Denethor clearly found that there was a greater force remaining in Mordor than the one which attacked Cair Andor, Osigiliath, the coasts, Linhir, Anorien and Minas Tirith. So their Total cannot have exceeded 60,000 strong. "

Look snaga, Gandalf during The Last Debate said that the forces of Mordor at Pelennor Fields were only about a tenth of his full strength. A MAJOR point you don't seem to grasp is that they were rushing to attack Sauron before he could gather all of his forces, or tricking him into attacking before he was ready. Thus, while it's fairly certain that around 60,000 were arrayed against the Army of the West at the Black Gate, it was NOT his entire army.

Your logic seems to be "Gandalf said Mordor had more armies, and because we know the forces At the Black Gate were 60,000, surely the Pelennor Forces must have been fewer"---->The Black Gate isn't the only part of Mordor. Given only two weeks, Sauron could not bring all of his forces to the Black Gate, just the ones around Gorgoroth.

I got the impression that Sauron may have had a standing army of up to a half-million strong, not just in Mordor but spread over all of Middle-earth.

Also, as you may recall, Aragorn goaded Sauron using the Palantir into launching his attack on Minas Tirith earlier than he wanted to and "the hasty stroke oft goes astray". The Pelennor Fields army was smaller than it should have been; he couldn't gather all of his armies to send out in time.

Bottom line: Pelennor Fields had maybe ~200,000, Black Gate only 60,000...and even more large armies were in Mordor that couldn't get to the Black Gate in time.

Further, the Battle of Pelennoor Fields is repeatedly refered to as the "greatest battle of the age"...meaning it was bigger than the Battle of the Morannon. ---Ricimer

Okay, you win but I still think that there is no way that 25,000 of the West could have defeated 200,000 orcs (as you say Ricimer) and have had 9000 remaining (as you say Ricimer) unless aragorn bought two million with him.- NanoBoy

Actually: The Orcs were leaderless at that point, and as I mentioned Eomer and Aragorn caught them in a pincers move. Most importantly, Aragorn brought ~10,000 men of Gondor's Southern Army, fully fresh to the battle while the Mordor forces had been continuously fighting since the night before (Aragorn arrived at about noon). Plus, numbers don't quite matter: a principle is that Orcs have a "quantity over quality" policy, as one Orc usually isn't a match for a Gondorian but by sheer weight of numbers they can overwhelm. Plus, the forces of Mordor had essentially no cavalry, while the Riders of Rohan were all mounted. As for "9,000 remaining", they left Minas Tirith in 2 days with 7,000 men, while they said they left a skeleton crew guarding the city, but they weren't worried about that because in a matter of days more men from southern Gondor (now liberated from the Corsair attack) would be arriving north and actually be able to garrison more men inside than were already there. And actually, it was less than that: it wasn't "25,000 defeating 200,000" it was ~3,000 in the city, 6,000 Rohirrim, and ~10,000 from the coasts. How many times can I stress this: under 20,000 Free Folk could defeat a 200,000 Mordor army because Mordor stresses quantity over quality, have poor archers, no cavalry, and poor tactics.---Ricimer

Lesser battering rams

I removed the part that says that before Grond other, smaller, battering rams were used. I couldn't find any mention of this in the book. And why would you spend all that effort to make Grond if you weren't going to use it? (Yes, I am aware the other rams are in the movie.) Eric119 00:20, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)