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Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim
That part also says that Orc arms grappled him after they had been cut off, or something similar. Implication is that Trolls and Orcs were fighting him at the time. He uttered the cry 70 times, but that could mean he killed 20 Trolls and 50 Orcs.
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Yes I'm not convinced the seventy refers all to Trolls myself, albeit Húrin was certainly mighty. In
The Grey Annals it was said that:
'Then he cast aside his shield and wielded his axe two-handed; and it is sung that in that last stand he himself slew an hundred of the Orcs. But they took him alive at last...'
Similarly one hundred Orcs in Tolkien's earlier
Quenta Silmarillion (HME V).
Christopher Tolkien explains that the text of chapter twenty in the published Silmarillion was primarily derived from the story in
The Grey Annals, but elements were introduced from the old chapter sixteen in
Quenta Silmarillion, and also from a third text, that:
'was intended as a component in the long prose Tale of the Children of Húrin (the Narn)'. It seems that in the new book
Children of Húrin Christopher Tolkien took the passage concerning the great battle from the
Narn version, whereas in the constructed Silmarillion he followed the Annals with some features taken from the Narn version.
A hundred orcs is an amazing feat (if indeed the songs merely meant to imply 'some great number', it was still notably great). Interesting that the number decreases a bit to seventy, though along with less explicit wording too, in my opinion, as to just what number Trolls were slain.