The Siege of Barad-Dur

[childoferu]

I don't remember whether it was weeks or months, but how could the Seige of Barad-Dur last that long, in fact, how can any siege last that long? Military historians, you can now stand up...

 

[HLGStrider]

One word: Cannibalism.

 

[Ithrynluin]

It was 7 years actually.

I've always found these numbers rather unbelievable myself...

 

[Elf of cave]

It was 7 years actually.

I've always found these numbers rather unbelievable myself...

The longest recorded siege in our own history lasted for twenty-two years, so a seven-years-siege is not unbelievable.

I can’t claim to be a military historian but I do have an idea as to why the Siege of Barad-dûr could last for so many years.

Laying siege to a town or fortification has the purpose of encircling the structure in question so as to force its’ surrender when the encircled forces’ supplies are used up. The great advantage of laying siege is that you avoid heavy casualties by assault, but on the other hand a siege can take long time and therefore be very expensive, and that the besieging army is bound to the siege itself and can not be used elsewhere.

A siege can basically arise from two situations. (1) the attacking forces chooses this tactics after the defenders have retreated into their stronghold. (2) the attacking forces are unable to breech the walls of the defenders stronghold and are forced to break off their assault to fall back and lay siege (maybe simply to gather their strength for another assault).

Concerning the siege of Barad-dûr I don’t believe the Last Alliance came to Mordor with the attention of laying siege. First of all because a siege deep within Mordor would be extremely difficult due to the environmental conditions in the land would not have been healthy, especially for the Men (lack of sunlight, lack of clean water supplies, the air filled with poisonous fumes and ash from Mount Doom etc.). So laying siege to Barad-dûr meant that all crucial supplies such as food, water, and medicine would have to have been brought in from outside Mordor, which is not an ideal situation because the supply lines would be very vulnerable to attack from Sauron’s allies.

I therefore believe that the Alliance tried to assault Barad-dûr but was unable to break through the stronghold’s defences (due to the fact that the walls themselves were made of iron and extremely hard stone, the gates were made of steel, and the foundations of the fortress were strengthened by the power of the One Ring), so they were forced to lay siege. This in itself would be a futile effort because Barad-dûr was located at the end of a long spur of the Ash Mountains, which was most likely full of underground tunnels which made it possible for supplies and warriors to be brought in to the besieged tower from Rhun, enabling Sauron to repel the assaults made by the Alliance, and making it impossible for the Alliance to isolate the fortress completely. The Alliance would therefore have been forced to uphold an aggressive siege with continuous assaults on Barad-dûr.

The seven years of siege seems, then, to have been a period in which both defenders and attackers tried different tactics to break the deadlock; in the end it appears that the Alliance was the most successful in dealing losses to the enemy, and thereby forced Sauron to gather his remaining forces and allies in a last attempt to break the siege and defeat the Alliance (this assumption is based purely on the fact that Sauron personally engaged the forces of the Alliance near Orodruin, which lay around 30 miles west of Barad-dûr, not at Barad-dûr itself which would seem likely if the Alliance had finally managed to break through the defences).

 

[ltnjmy]

The siege of Troy - in Greek mythology - also lasted longer than the siege of Barad-Dur - - according to Homer, it took the Greeks 10 years to conquer the Trojans and then, they succeeded only by stealth (using the mythic Horse).

 

[Tar-Surion]

Elf of Cave is quite correct in my opinion. It would have been hard to seal off Barad-dur. The alliance would have had to set up siege lines in the Mountains behind the Tower, a difficult undertaking and to locate and block the tunnels and bolt-holes leading into it, an even more difficult one, even if, as is likely they had a corps of Dwarven engineers to do the dirty work.

But it would have been hard for Sauron too. Where his supplies would have come from is anyone's guess. He was cut off from Black Numenorean Harad and the Slave Fields of Lake Nuren by the Alliance. This left his only source of supply the steppes to the north of Mordor which do not seem to have been suitable of agriculture, even if it remained under Sauron's control, which is unlikely. These areas would have been subdued, or at least ravaged, by Elvish or Numenorean forces in fairly short order one imagines.

In antiquity the average length of a siege was 6 months, although in some cases they could last years, depending on how much food was stored. In the case of Barad-dur there would have been lots.

As for siege-warfare well you can undermine the walls with tunnels, knock them down with catapults, attack with siege towers or destroy the gate with rams. Even the mightiest fortress will eventually succumb to a combination of these techniques. Perhaps though Barad-dur with the awful Sauron in residence was too strong for this and eventually it was famine that rendered it indefensible.

Either way the Great Siege would have been the most difficult, complex and bloody military operation of the Second Age, an epic struggle of good against evil.

 

[Bucky]

Very nice post by Elf of the cave....

The only addition/arguement I could make is that there is no possible way that supplies where being shipped in from as far away as Rhun. Certainly all 'ways in' to Barad-dur would be watched, at least all ways beyond the mountains.

 

[Elf of cave]

Very nice post by Elf of the cave....

The only addition/arguement I could make is that there is no possible way that supplies where being shipped in from as far away as Rhun. Certainly all 'ways in' to Barad-dur would be watched, at least all ways beyond the mountains.

First of thank you. Secondly, you are right; I can see my inner Middle-earth map had Rhun placed further to the West, so I correct myself: Sauron would have recieved supplies from allies settled in the Wilderness, near the Ash Mountains

 

[Bucky]

I also suspect eating the dead & LOTS of rats were available in Barad-Dur to eat.

Such things DO happen in real sieges.

 

[Alcuin]

Long sieges are not at all unknown. Since the 1200s, there have been many long sieges. Here are just a few;

• The Siege of Sarajevo from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996 during the Bosnian War lasted nearly 4 years. That was less than 14 years ago: many folks here on the TTF board should remember it.
• The Great Siege of Gibraltar lasted over 3½ years, 1779-1783.
• The Siege of Xiangyang lasted 5 years, 1268–1273.
• The siege of the Solovetsky Monastery lasted 1668–1676, 8 years.
• The Siege of Ishiyama Hongan-ji was conducted 1570–1580, lasting 10 years.
• The Siege of Candia lasted 21 years, 1648–1669. Christians in what is now moden-day Heraklion, Crete, were besieged by forces of the Ottoman Turks. Wikipedia – admittedly not the most reliable source, but often indicative – says this could be the longest siege in history; it appears to be the longest in Wikipedia’s list of sieges, at any rate.

These are “recent” sieges in the sense that irrefutable eyewitness historic records remain from participants in both sides of the events. The beginning and ending dates of the sieges are recorded, and we have original documents, not copies of documents or citations from other sources, as in the case of the Greek (Achaean) siege of Troy. Of the six sieges in this list, four of them are overtly religious struggles: Sarajevo, the Solovetsky Monastery, Ishiyama Hongan-ji, and Candia. The Siege of Xiangyang may also be seen in religious terms if one ascribes to the Chinese defenders a belief in the service of a divine emperor. For myself, I do not ascribe any religious motivation to the Great Siege of Gibraltar, although one side was Protestant and the other Catholic: it was, in my mind, purely a struggle of the nation-states.

My point in raising the religious character of these long sieges is to remind you that Sauron encouraged – demanded – that his followers worship him as a god. Under such conditions, the defenders might be more willing to suffer the deprivation of siege.

The final contest between Sauron, Gil-galad, Elendil, Elrond, and Isildur on the slopes of Orodruin should, I think, be seen as a mad rush to the Sammath Naur by Sauron (and probably his bodyguards, who must have been overcome, eliminated, or deserted en route) in a desperate attempt to try to harness the power of the volcano to lift the siege of Barad-dûr.

As far as reinforcement or resupply of Barad-dûr, we must suppose that the Alliance eventually choked off all but the merest trickle of supplies into the fortress: else Sauron would surely have escaped through some rat-hole and reappeared with reinforcements to attack the Alliance from behind. It is atypical, particularly of selfish and tyrannical despots, that they stick to their fortresses until the last: they normally desert and reappear elsewhere. In this sense, Stalin, who refused to leave Moscow, and Hitler, who refused to leave Berlin, are notably exceptional; however, recent evidence uncovered by German historian Rainer Karlsch indicates that experimental physicist Kurt Diebner detonated two small nuclear devices in Thuringia during World War II: Hitler may have been holed up hoping for something he could use in battle. By harnessing the power of Mount Doom, Sauron may have effectively been attempting something similar, at least in Middle-earth terms.

 

[Bucky]

I'm surprised The German Siege of St Petersberg wasn't mentioned.........

It started Sept 8, 1941 ands was lifted Jan 27, 1944.

It should be noted that in this time, a body of water to the north froze each winter, allowing supplies to be carted in for a period of time.

As for a German Nuclear Bomb, it was the Japs (sorry, I was a child of the mid-60's) who I've heard much more about. A history channel show went into quite detaild info, including the Russians carting off tons of equipment when they finally entered the war in the Pacific just days before the US nuked Hiroshima.


Here's a bit more sketchy info from, where else?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_program

 

[ltnjmy]

I'm surprised The German Siege of St Petersberg wasn't mentioned.........

It started Sept 8, 1941 ands was lifted Jan 27, 1944.

It should be noted that in this time, a body of water to the north froze each winter, allowing supplies to be carted in for a period of time.

Thanks for another great, as usual, posting. Yes, I forgot about that siege - a significant turning point in WWII...

 

[Alcuin]

The Siege of Leningrad was a horrible affair. I know some people who lived through it, survived it, and have spoken to them about it. But it was shorter than all the other six, shorter than many other sieges in the longer list.

My point was not to ignore suffering in Leningrad or the Japanese detonation of a nuclear device off the coast of Korea just days before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was not even to examine the behavior of mid-twentieth century tyrants. It is to examine the behavior of Sauron and what might have motivated to act as he did during the siege of Barad-dûr.

 

[Bucky]

JUst adding info; nothing more.

It's all good - er, bad in this case.