Wow! As the Orcs break down the doors to the keep, Gimli notes that the sun is rising, allowing Aragorn to remember the arrival of Gandalf, and convinced Théoden to ride out with him. And even stonework is vulnerable to erosion and damage, especially stonework that is part of a living working city (and may also be scavenged for usable masonry by less scrupulous types).

Whereas the Witch King remained focused, Saruman dissipates his efforts, including his one key advantage (the bomb), all over the field, leaving insufficient forces to engage the only place that matters: the Hornburg. The Huorns don’t attack anyone or anything, they just deal with whatever Orcs try to make a run for it to escape the MILITARY forces that have swept down the western ridge. Partly, he plans to do this by currying favour — look, I took care of Rohan for you, what a great servant I am — but he probably also intends to defend the narrow strip of land between the White Mountains and Anduin that Sauron garrisons during his assault on Gondor. or Avaricum (52 B.C.). able to indefinately resist -> able to indefinitely resist Second, yamamoto DID lure the american carriers out at midway. Nevertheless, Éomer’s cavalry charge through and spend some time killing Uruks before we cut away. Though I should note that if you are going to have your army demonstrate, you ought to do it either with shields raised or out of bowshot. Nevertheless, Gandalf has apparently timed this charge to blind the Uruks with the rising sun. Another very interesting post – I really like how you emphasise Saruman’s incompetence. So it’s partly on me. Yes, there was the odd balrog and dragon thrown in, to slightly spare their blushes, but the body-count that orcs were able to rack up against the Noldor makes no sense at all if the elves were all god mode Mary Sue super-beings. Could you try doing two apostrophes, putting the coding around it, and then deleting the first comma? Opposed by an army perhaps one-third of their size in a fairly favorable operational environment (they face few problems moving over the terrain, despite several operational mistakes) they not only failed to achieve the operational objectives, but lost the entire army in the process. I am not dispelling your fear – because this is battle and everyone is afraid and no words can take that away – I am mentally preparing you for your fear. > Not only did Saruman miss all the human factors in organizing his army, he also missed half his STEM classes. It does repeat and underscore the question of how the Noldor ever managed to lose the war against Morgoth (again: an elf, who Tolkien scarcely thinks worth more than a name check in The Silmarillion, other than to note that he is one of Turgon’s captains is the equal of what is presumably Morgoth’s best balrog, in combat, at Gondolin), but there was a lot of elf-on-elf fighting going on, which might be supposed to account for most of the casualties, and possibly even elves are flammable if a dragon sneezes on them at range having somehow sneaked up on said elves or if the elves forgot to pack their bows this morning. The battle begins once the Uruk host of 10,000 has formed fully in front of the castle - an accidental bow shot by an old man kills an Uruk at the front, followed by a volley of arrows from all defenders once the Uruks begin to charge forward. Aragorn declares that ‘Gondor will answer’ which, given that Gondor is about to be invaded by the much larger armies of Mordor in about a week, is pretty nearly pure lunacy (not to mention that Helm’s Deep is much too far away for even a Gondorian cavalry force to arrive in time). You may ask why the powder-charge can’t be placed just anywhere; the reason is that a contained space – like underneath the wall – is required to channel the pressure and energy of the explosion into moving the material of the wall, rather than into a shock-wave through the air. We both caught a few the other didn’t. It is small wonder this tiny army will fight with such ferocity, given the stakes. The Huorns’ arrival undoubtedly disconcerts the orcs and weakens their morale (I take it that the “strange news” of stage 1 concerns the giant forest that’s appeared overnight), but it’s Théoden’s sally that actually breaks them, and it’s quite possible that the surprise of his sudden attack would have caused them to flee even without the Huorns. And hatred – for men or Rohan – is also a weak motivation; once the prospect for dealing fatal harm to the kingdom of Rohan melts away, so does the motivation.

Moreover, the Uruk team tasked with taking the gate ought to have been specially picked out, trained and prepared for this task. Appealing to pride is a good way to arouse that fear of shame, as the two emotions are deeply connected. We are meant to understand that Saruman is on the point of victory, that his hasty assault was successful. Even more so than the series on the Battle of the Pelennor, because I had no clue how this battle exposes how poorly prepared Saruman’s troops are, how obvious it becomes to the astute reader that his mind of metal and wheels has not gone any further than planning a clockwork assault, without training the army—or appointing the officers—who might have handled it. The rearguard is left at the Dike (TT, 161) which provides warning, a limited defense in depth and crucially creates a window for any stragglers from Théoden’s or Erkenbrand’s forces to regroup at the fortress. They have no cover. One would think that a forked stick to push the ladder away from the wall would also be handy.

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A few months back when I was researching siege-engines, I was struck by how almost none of the medieval or ancient (European) ones were the tension-based, “giant (cross)bow” kind—almost all the ones I could find were the torsion-based type. What precisely is not known: but it was something of the porpoise or dolphin kind, probably; at any rate less than a real hwael. But even if he had planned for some resistance from Rohan, that would not have been in Helm’s Deep but either in Meduseld or Harrowdale (as you very intelligently point out in a previous post, Helm’s Deep is too close to Saruman). [T 3], Théoden had been released by the Wizard Gandalf from the influence of Gríma Wormtongue, his malevolent adviser and Saruman's spy. So far so good. And many of them are quite obviously too long and complex for the situations into which they are placed.

How is an Uruk – who you have told does not feel fear (in the previous film) – likely to respond when the terror of battle actually hits him? “I actually thing” -> “think”. You know what else Saruman reminds me of? Which is remarkable because there are no traditional battle speeches in The Lord of the Rings (by which I mean the books).