The Way We War

[The Sixth Wizard]

The thirteen Dwarves who cut through to Bolg's guard were the Thorin's company.

Thorin and his companions then charged out to join the battle, covered from head to toe in the finest armour and weapons contained in the treasure hoard of Erebor. Thorin advanced through the Goblins' ranks all the way up to the gigantic Goblins that formed the bodyguard of Bolg, who he could not get past. He was outflanked and surrounded, and was forced to form his troops into a great circle.

Taken from Wikipedia, as I don't have the book on hand. But I suppose it is accurate.

[Kuruharan]

Taken from Wikipedia, as I don't have the book on hand. But I suppose it is accurate.

Not a statement to fill one with confidence.

Down heedless of all order (aside...hmmm, ponder the implications of that for a moment those who think the dwarves favored a berzerker style of combat) rushed all the dwarves of Dain to his help. Down too came many of the Lake-men, for Bard could not restrain them; and out upon the other side came many of the spearmen of the elves.

-The Clouds Burst

Thorin and Company didn't cut their way through to Bolg's bodyguard all by themselves.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

As to bows:

I'm not sure how any Dwarven bow would be a "long" bow However, I can see the possibility that Dwarves could still be very effective archers, assuming that they accepted the years of training and practice required.

With a simple or "self" bow, both its power and its draw-weight are direct functions of its length. The classic English longbow, which was fitted to the archer by matching the length of his outstretched arms, managed (probably as a result of trial and error) to come up with the most efficient possible configuration for a simple bow, one where at full draw the bowstring makes essentially a right angle. This maximises the power available for a given draw-weight, which in English examples was as heavy as a trained man could manage.

It's certainly possible to get equal power from a shorter bow using composite construction- but the tradeoff is that, since the bow is shorter and therefore provides less leverage at the tips, the draw weight for a given power is considerably heavier; or, looking at it from a different point of view, since a short composite bow on the Asian pattern can still have a draw no heavier than a man can handle its effective power is less. In other words, a shorter bow is simply less efficient, no matter how clever its construction.

Having said all that, though, these are Dwarves- which means they might well be able to handle a draw far heavier than the 180-200 lb-f a strong man can master, and thus potentially equal a longbow's power in a dwarf-sized weapon.


Still, it seems to me that the Dwarven love of devices would have attracted them rather to the crossbow- which also doesn't require the training and practice (archery ranges underground????). Moreover, one would expect Dwarves to be able to handle hook-and-stirrup cocking of much heavier crossbows than human examples, and thus avoid the rate-of-fire penalty of the various crank systems.

[davem]

Crossbows were very much second-best against the Longbow in terms of range & speed of shooting (hence the use of pavises by crossbowmen - & their vulnerability without them (as with the Genoese at Crecy)). No medieval army would employ crossbowmen if they had trained Longbowmen. Of course, the English dominance in the medieval period depended on the use of the longbow in conjunction with men at arms on foot (again, Crecy dealt the death-blow to the mounted cavalry charge

The battle of Crećy where a 16-year-old Edward the Black Prince would earn his spurs, was no chivalric battlefield. By 1346 the English had lost interest in chivalry as a military occupation. The English were massively out numbered, and the French had assumed that the knights on both sides would battle it out on horseback, and that the smaller English force would be overwhelmed, ransomed and go home ruined. But the English were playing by a new rulebook, when they arrived at the battlefield most of the knights dismounted ready to fight on foot. They were relying on the support of their non-noble longbow men. The English Longbow was not a noble weapon, and not wielded by rich young nobles, in the right hands it was to prove to be a weapon of mass destruction; The French and their allies charged with full pageantry in the first five minutes the English loosed more than 3,000 arrows, the flower of French and Genoese chivalry was cut down by archers on sixpence a day. The French Knights mercilessly rode down the survivors of their own ineffective crossbowmen soon after their Genoese allies had succumbed to the English arrow storm. Here the notion of chivalry can be seen as a means by which to avenge so-called cowardice, even though the French Knights were doomed to suffer a similar fate, annihilated by the English cloth-yard arrow. They lost 5,000 men the English a few hundred.
http://www.authorsden.com/categories...id=17&id=18826

So, the Dwarves' choice of Longbow or Crossbow probably depended on what weaponry their enemies chose).

As to the 'shieldwall' theory - probable in some cases, but its essentially a defensive tactic. You certainly can't charge in a shieldwall formation. Again, it depends entirely on the tactics of your opponents. Certainly by the time of the English Civil Wars it had been found that shieldless pikemen were more effective than any kind of shieldwall. Shields disappeared from the battlefield when armour became effective enough to require two handed weapons like poleaxes/glaives to inflict injuries. If Orcish (or Elvish come to that) armour was strong enough to ward off a blow from a one-handed sword or axe then heavier, two-handed weapons would have been called for, & you can't then use a shield (unless, as pointed out earlier, you sling it across your back -

The dwarves are exceedingly strong for their height, but most of these were
strong even for dwarves. In battle they wielded heavy two-handed mattocks; but each of them had also a short broad sword at his side and a round shield slung at his back. Their beards were forked and plaited and thrust into their belts. (The Clouds Burst)

Seems that Tolkien envisioned both tactics - two-handed mattock for 'offence' & shield/short-sword for 'defence'.

[Rumil]

Hi all,

Crossbows are hypothetical in Middle Earth but I agree Dwarves (or possibly bad-guys) seem likeliest candidates if anyone used them.

They do have some advantages over longbows. The key point was that crossbows could be effective when used by poorly-trained troops but longbows needed archers with practically lifelong experience to be most effective (see Elves ). The crossbow can be more powerful, but is slower to load, however it can be kept 'cocked' for a while. This could be very useful in sieges or perhaps underground fighting when waiting for an appearing target. The relatively flat trajectory of the crossbow bolt means it can be easily fired indoors, and if necessary through small holes etc.

Saying that, the Iron Hills Dwarves included some bow-armed troops.

As Elmo commented, Bard disparaged the Dwarves' military abilities above-ground but I think he's referring to their tactics, being unaware that the Allies had concealed the bulk of their forces in ambush.

[Tuor in Gondolin]

Wouldn't the plusses of crossbows cited above make
them advantageous also, not just for dwarves and
orcs, but also for the comparatively advanced
technology of Gondor? Useful in defending cities and also
in street fighting if , say, old Grond poked an opening
into Minas Tirith.

[davem]

Part of the effect of the longbow in battle was rate of fire - an English archer could loose anything from 15-20 arrows a minute. Records for Towton in 1461 (where both sides had archers) estimate that half a million arrows were loosed in 10 minutes

English archers have attained a mythic status down the ages because of the showy underdog victories at Crécy and Agincourt. They were nation-specific – only the English and the Welsh took on the discipline, the plebeian odium and the round loathing that came with a bow. None of the continental countries deigned to partake, preferring to be nobly kebabbed. They relied on specialist Genoese crossbowmen – the Polish plumbers of medieval battlefields. Not even the bellicose Scots and Irish could be bothered with bows, but when used in sufficient numbers and with discipline, the longbow was the lethal arbiter of battlefields for 300 years.

It was slowly replaced by gunpowder . Any terrified peasant could point and pull a trigger, but it took a lifetime of aching, deforming practice to muscle up the 100lb of tug needed to draw a yew bow to dispatch a cloth yard of willow-shafted, goose-feathered, bodkin-tipped arrow 200 yards through plate, through chain, through leather and linen and prayers, into a man’s gizzard. The longbow was the most lethally efficient dealer of death on European battlefields until the invention of rifling and the Gatling gun.

The archers stepped forward and together chucked up what they call the “arrow storm”. An English archer could fire 15 to 20 arrows in a minute – that’s what made the opening moments of battle so horrific. The eclipse of arrows would have crossed high in the frozen air, and in that moment Edward and the House of York had their touch of luck.

The thick, stinging curtain of snow slashed the faces of the Lancastrian line, making it difficult to aim or judge distance, pushing their arrows short. And it carried the arrows of York further and deeper into the Lancastrian line. God howled and cracked for Edward that morning, searing the cheeks and freezing the eyes of Lancaster.

The metal-detectors have found the long, broad trench of bodkin points, showing where the first appalling fusillade was loosed. Emptying their own quivers, they began firing back the arrows wasted by their enemies. There may have been half a million arrows fired in 10 minutes that day – the largest longbow shafting in history http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tra...ffset=0&page=1

Now, compare that with what thus guy is doing for most of that time which would mainly be adding to the colour of the battlefield with his pretty pavise.....

The success of the archer in battles like Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt & Towton was down to rate of fire & the number of arrows that could be loosed - it depended little on accuracy - basically it was like charging into a solid, but very spiky, wall. The impact would knock you over, & then you'd have virtually no chance of getting up again before you were trampled to death (usually by your own side). Yes, you can carry a crossbow loaded & cocked, but if you missed, then once your first shot was loosed an archer could put a dozen arrows into you before you could get off a second shot. Also you have the problem of weather - at Crecy there had been a sharp rainstorm just before the battle which had weakened the strings of the crossbows carried by the Genoese, whereas the English carried spare bowstrings in their helmets which were nice & dry & could re-string their bows quickly. It was the gun which put paid to the bow, not the crossbow, & it took a long time for guns to develop to the required standard of reliability & effectiveness.