Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGreatElvenWarrior
Pippin went out to get hobbits from the Great Smials to fight, but Merry stayed in Bywater from the time they arrived there to the time that the Battle of Bywater ended.
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Although, to be fair, Brandy Hall was hardly the fourteen miles from Bywater that Tookland was. Merry
couldn't have gotten reinforcements if he tried, and at any rate he ended up making the battle plans so he was needed at Bywater.
Looking at the Shire map, the answer to the question is fairly ambiguous. Yes, the ruffians held the bridge, but Buckland is inherently more defensible than the rest of the Shire, especially if (with the tobacco ties) all the Ruffians entered from the Southfarthing rather than the east. They're sandwiched right in between the Brandywine and the High Hay leading to the Old Forest.
So it's very hard to say. Perhaps some of the smaller homesteads had ruffian trouble, but I think if something disastrous happened to Brandy Hall itself (which was about as large as the Great Smials) it would have been recorded.