How many in Battle of 5 Armies?

[Rumil]

Hi all,

intersting thread! Here's an earlier one with some details and speculation on the Battle of Five Armies-

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...t=battles+late

Scroll down a bit for the Five Armies section.

To summarise, the dwarves had 500 heavily armed soldiers with a few archers. The elves had 1000 spearmen at least, and I believe that their archers would have outnumbered the spearmen, so I guessed at a total elven force of 2500. The men of Laketown (and presumably the surrounding area) are not numbered, but were assigned the dwarves to bolster their flank of the battle, if you guess at an even split of forces that makes up-to 2000 Lakemen, though I admit this is a complete guess.

On Dain's potential 'blue-on-blue' it seems clear that the Elven-Laketown alliance had concealed the majority of their forces, confusing the dwarves who were not experienced in above-ground battles. If this calamity had happened then the dwarves would surely have lost, though must have inflicted heavy losses on the allies.