Glorious Pedantry on the Siege of Minas Tirith

It is probably no surprise to those who know me that Russia's invasion of Ukraine set me off on a good deal of reading.  Among the online writers I found is Bret Devereaux whose blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry focuses primarily on military history, but who naturally has a couple of good recent posts dealing with topics relevant to the war in Ukraine.  

However, Devereaux also posts on fannish topics at times, and thus I stumbled across a six part series he did analyzing the Siege of Minas Tirith (in the movies and then contrasting those with the books) from a military history point of view.  It's pretty glorious, if like me you can enjoy someone taking careful pedantry to a topic which maybe doesn't entirely deserve it but is still worth the read.  

So, for instance, we get an analysis of whether the sixty mile distance from Minas Morgul to Minas Tirith is a reasonable distance for the Witch King to attempt to lead an army through without visible supply train; a comparison of the defensive fortifications of Minas Tirith in the movie vs the book; an assessment of whether the beacons could work as a message system; and an analysis of movie-Faramir's tactics in Osgiliath as compared to those of book-Faramir, and that's before the host of Mordor even reaches the city.

As a side note, he also has a side post dealing with the trope (which drives me nuts in the LotR movies) of cities which are surrounded by exactly no townland or farmland.  This conveniently allows for seeing the armies of Morder neatly laid out in formations which have no battlefield purpose, but it is unclear how the city feeds itself.  (In the book, of course, it's specifically described how the Pelennor Fields are covered with farms.)  

Here's an example of the discussion of formation for flavor:

The second oddity is the formation. Forming an army up in neat rectangles like this is difficult. It takes time, planning and effort. Some orc had to sit down, calculate the size of each unit and then tetris them all together. Which is strange, because I am not sure exactly what this formation was intended to accomplish. It doesn’t completely envelop the city, so it serves to advertise very clearly the intended point of contact (something most armies would want to conceal for as long as possible). And apart from the orcs in the front, all of these troops are formed up in range of enemy weapons with nothing to do.

This pre-assault period should actually be very busy. The paths the siege towers will take must be cleared and leveled (those towers have very little clearance and even a slight grade will tip them over – they need a path made for them). Earthwork cover for the approach on the gate should be set up, along with obstructions to prevent the army within the city from advancing out of it at an inopportune moment. In assaulting a fortified city with a large army, the spade is often the most important weapon. Even simply building a ramp right up the side of the enemy walls to enter the city was a common and successful tactic, if the assaulting army had enough labor to do it quickly enough.

Book Note: These issues are avoided in the book. We are directly told the orc army engages the city wall at all points (RotK 104-5, 111) and that many of the orcs are engaged in digging earthworks or setting up siege machines (RotK 105). The goal is to spread out Gondor’s defensive forces, weakening resistance at the gate, where the main blow (via Grond) was always going to fall.

Nor are these formations effective battle formations. Some of the lines look to be dozens of ranks deep and densely packed. That both prevents these blocks from moving around and through each other (a key component, for instance, of Roman battlefield tactics) or of these men moving on their own. If an open battle breaks out, only a small portion of this army can fight effectively – most of the orcs will be trapped with buddies in front and behind (of course lines of melee infantry were often quite deep, but not this deep – the standard depth for Romans was 6, Greek hoplites 8, Macedonian pikemen 16). This is simply not a good way to organize an army for a siege or a battle – and it’s also a difficult way to organize an army, so you are not likely to have done it by accident either.

But this style of assembly does have a historical precedent – just not a military one. Jackson is mimicking a very famous sequence from Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), a Nazi propaganda film. The scene, which shows the Nazis gathered for a political rally, was calculated to impress on the viewer the great and united strength of the Nazi party (paradoxically, Hitler’s party was, at that moment, fairly weak and divided – this is why he wanted the propaganda film in the first place – check out this brief treatment of the film’s deception and continuing relevance). Since then, this has become a standard visual trope for ‘large, powerful army of bad guys’ (and sometimes very awkwardly for assembled ‘good guys’ as in the medal-ceremony at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope) even though it isn’t a military formation per se (and in fact, the Nazis doing it in Triumph were not soldiers of the German army, the Wehrmacht, but members of the party – very few actual soldiers appear in Triumph of the Will).

 Definitely recommended for any Lord of the Rings fans who appreciate military history or a good solid pedantic post, or both.