Scaling the Walls of War in Middle-Earth - Page 4
© Michael Martinez
The practice of carving up mountainsides thus developed. Huge, massive walls which could not be easily overthrown or mounted would ensure that a city or fortress would survive a siege until relief forces came. Such fortifications would enable the Numenoreans to gradually spread out across the countryside, driving back Sauron's armies, suppressing indigenous peoples or driving them out. If mountains were not available, the Numenoreans would have to import immense quantities of stone. Their strategy became one of rigid defense, advanced step by step, in the face of repetitive assaults.
Sauron's strategy would have to focus on derailing Numenorean efforts to build their fortifications. If he could overrun a Numenorean position before the huge fortifications were in place, he could prevent the Numenoreans from establishing a new artery of colonization and control. The larger rivers would be the scenes of most warfare. Numenor needed them to bring their ships deeper inland, and Sauron needed to cross them, to prevent Numenorean raids from sailing up the rivers, and to ensure his allies and servants had sufficient resources to support themselves.
If a Numenorean lord or prince wished to earn glory for himself, he need only find an unconquered river region and establish Numenorean control over it. Or he could take back a Numenorean colony which had been seized by Sauron. People often wonder why the Nazgul are not mentioned in accounts of the Second Age, but if Sauron used them against the Numenoreans, they were probably most effective in the southern wars, where the Eldar could not help the Numenoreans. An important city might be harrassed by a Nazgul-led army.
The emphasis on war and conquest in the south may further explain why the northern lands became attractive to the Faithful. They weren't just moving closer to the Eldar, they were moving farther away from the worst fighting. Gil-galad's people were still engaged in active warfare with Sauron's forces, but the real struggle shifted southward. Numenorean strategy seems to have turned upon threatening Sauron from the south in order to draw off some of his forces. Hence, Umbar and Pelargir were built within striking distance of Mordor.
The reliance upon defensive fortifications backed by supreme naval power may have served Numenor well, but Gondor and Arnor were presented with different challenges. Gondor, especially, established a huge land-based empire in the early Third Age. Without the threat of Sauron's empire in the east, Gondor was able to expand into lands which Numenor had never before controlled, or had controlled only briefly under Ar-Pharazon. Even though the Easterlings began attacking Gondor in the 5th century, they most likely were not as well supplied and organized as Sauron's armies had been in the Second Age.
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