First of all,
Tolkien’s characters employ a great deal of hyperbole, both for flattery within the story and for effect.
Bombadil and
Goldberry both say Bombadil is “Eldest”, and
Glorfindel warns that if
Sauron re-obtains the
Ruling Ring, “Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First.” We would presume that Glorfindel, returned from the
Halls of Mandos in
Valinor from death in Crissaegrim, very nearly equal in power with
Gandalf the Grey, knows what he’s talking about.
But what of
Treebeard? Is he not “the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this
Middle-earth,” as
Gandalf says? He tells
Théoden that “when you speak with him you will hear the speech of the oldest of all living things.” Is Gandalf mistaken?
Tolkien’s characters are variously the “oldest” or “strongest” or “greatest” or some other most superlative in many different guises. Christopher Tolkien says (though I cannot immediately put my hands on the citation) that his father was given over to this kind of hyperbole.
So also with the descriptions of the fleets of
Aman in the
War of Wrath and of fallen
Númenóreans and their invasion fleet to Aman.
Some points, however:
- Both of these great fleets were associated not so with Middle-earth as with Aman, with Valinor: one coming, one going.
- The Númenórean fleet Ar-Pharazôn assembled to invade Aman was greater in size and power than that he gathered to invade Mordor. For one thing, he had at his disposal not only his own former lands and resources and people, Sauron’s were also given over to his use: it Sauron’s idea, and if it came at the cost of a few, or many!, unfortunate souls taken from his realms, or treasure extracted from his chattel in Middle-earth, what of it? If the Númenóreans, descendants of his enemies the Edain for whom Lúthien humiliated him, were overthrown, as they surely would be in Valinor, then to Sauron it was worth it.
- The Valar were forbidden to kill the Children of Ilúvatar or by their might and terror subdue them to their will. This was why they lay down their governance of Arda when Ar-Pharazôn and his King’s Men stepped ashore in Eldamar.
- The Fleet of Aman at the end of the First Age was captained and manned by the Teleri, who did not (much) come ashore, and the army it landed was of Maiar, Vanyar, and Noldor. The general who led it was Eönwë, herald of Manwë (formerly “Fionwë,” son of Manwë and Varda in the earlier tellings of the story). The only one of the Valar that accompanied them to Middle-earth was Tulkas, a late arrival to Arda, who came into Arda after the other Valar to offset the physical might of Melkor Morgoth, and came to Middle-earth with the invasion fleet to wrestle Morgoth and bind him once more with the chain Angainor.
To me, this description of the Army of Aman in the War of Wrath, composed of Maiar and the
Elves of Valinor accompanied by the most physically powerful
Vala is incomparably stronger than the Númenórean Invasion Fleet;
however, the Ainu inhabitants of Aman are
not permitted to attack and kill or main or disable or overawe the Númenórean invaders. Hence
Eru’s intervention and
Númenor’s destruction, accompanied by a tsunami that wrecks the Númenórean harbors and colonies along the western coast of Middle-earth: the power of Númenor is broken, and all that remains are the few Faithful of Middle-earth and
the nine ships of
Elendil and his followers, besides the inland King’s Men who become the
Black Númenóreans of
the Third Age.
Nevertheless, I think there can be little doubt that the number of vessels and the size of the army sent by the Númenóreans to Aman was greater than that sent by the Valar to the succor of the
Elves and Edain at the end of the First Age. Ar-Pharazôn would still possess reliable records and descriptions of that earlier assemblage, and no doubt he and his commanders consulted those documents as they began their preparations for invasion. It would not do to send a force numerically smaller or, as best as they could determine, less powerful than the expedition sent an age before from Valinor: to do so would be simply to invite defeat on the beaches. The Númenórean force had to be, in the eyes of the deluded Númenóreans, more than capable of overcoming the powers that inhabited Valinor.
I say the Númenóreans were deluded because, in my opinion, although they could overthrow many of the Maiar – Glorfindel and
Ecthelion other Elves had killed
Balrogs in
Gondolin,
Turin defeated and slew the
dragon Glaurung, all of which Ar-Pharazôn and his commanders knew; and later Elendil and
Gil-galad threw down Sauron himself, who was unhoused and vanquished when
Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from his hand – they had no real hope of overcoming the Valar, who helped shape and form Arda itself.
Now I do believe the Númenóreans could have inflicted tremendous damage in Aman, unhousing many of the Maiar and slaughtering many if not most of the Elves, besides the physical damage they would inflict,
even if the Maiar and Elves fought against them. But they never had any realistic hope of overcoming the Valar; and in any case, the Valar were forbidden even to attempt their own defense.
Sauron knew this well: his whole scheme was a Satanic effort to afflict the Númenóreans whom he hated, the Valar whom he hated, and cause pain to Eru Himself whom he feared and hated.
Based upon these reflections, I think Ar-Pharazôn’s Aman invasion fleet was undoubtedly the
largest ever assembled in the First, Second, and Third
Ages. The “most powerful” is another matter.
I wrote an essay on this some years ago, “
A Peek at the Last Entry of Sauron’s Journal in Númenor”. Some of you might enjoy it.
I love how it starts, that was funny AF xD
