<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Shade of Carn Dûm
Posts: 437</TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
Re: Whoa!
Whoa! Blast from the past! And you thought I was a math major, BW. If Gil's calculations are correct, then the East Gate could easily accomodate dwarvish traffic requirements (I think his estimation of a population of one hundred thousand may be overly generous, and if I'm not mistaken his calculations assume that the entire dwarvish food supply is provided by trade through the East Gate).
In the battle between the Orcs led by Azog and the Dwarves before the East Gate, the Orc force is overcome and virtually destroyed. One version in HoME XII puts the number of Orcish dead at ten thousand (see Durin's Folk). If we can deem this number to be at least roughly accurate, we can make several deductions from it:
1) The Orcs had more than a simple garrison force at Moria.
2) Even if we assume that ten thousand dead Orcs represents only a third of Azog's force, then that means the combined host of the Dwarves was less than that number (thirty thousand), since the account of the Battle of Azanulbizar in Appendix A says that at the start of the fight, the Orcs outnumbered the Dwarves.
</p>
|