Scaling the Walls of War in Middle-Earth - Page 5
© Michael Martinez
Hence, as Gondor's power grew, it did not build new fortifications in the east and south to secure that power. Where Numenor had been prudent in the Second Age, Gondor became arrogant and overconfident in the Third Age. The loss of Umbar to the rebels who fled south at the end of the Kin-strife thus not only weakened Gondor substantially, it revealed the flaw in Gondorian imperial strategy. Gondor had no nearby bases to fall back upon. The Kings of Gondor had to mount naval expeditions against a naval power. Unlike Numenor, Gondor never achieved naval supremacy. There were other Black Numenorean havens to the south of Umbar, and these could have helped to resupply Umbar on occasion.
So Umbar had to be destroyed, not retaken, near the end of the second millennium, and by this time Sauron was again powerful enough to begin wearing down Gondor's already depleted population. The Great Plague had forced Gondor to withdraw its forces from Mordor and Tharbad. The empire was shrinking and there were no great fortresses to control points of access on the remaining frontiers. All roads into Gondor from the east and south were virtually unguarded.
Gondorian Kings must have realized they were in trouble, but did they have the ability to recapture lost lands and build grand new fortresses? Probably not. Numenor's population was able to grow in peace and security through all the centuries of the Second Age. In the Third Age, Arnor and Gondor both suffered terrible attribution through their wars and the Great Plague. If the populations of either kingdom even managed brief recoveries, some new threat came along to further weaken them. There was no respite sufficient enough to allow them to create the surplus populations required for true imperial expansion.
Gondor's armies had also become accustomed to marching across great expanses of land. The shift in Gondorian tactics had been effected by the War of the Last Alliance. Both Arnor and Gondor were the heartlands of (Faithful) Numenorean power. The armies did not have to be brought in from over sea. So there was only need to maintain a naval power sufficient to ward off possible attacks from Black Numenorean havens in the south. The rest of Arnor and Gondor's resources were devoted to building up huge armies.
Arnor's army marched south with Gil-galad's army and other forces. Gondor's army retook Minas Ithil and closed off Sauron's escape passes in the south. After the war, Gondor took up the task of guarding Mordor against Sauron's return. Gondor did become embroiled in naval wars with Umbar, but such warfare was unknown in the Second Age, or so ineffective that Numenor easily crushed all rivals on the sea. So Gondor had to supplement its naval power with land power. The wars with the Easterlings and Haradrim who lived to the east of Umbar ensured that Gondor would continue to emphasize land power as much as if not more than naval power. And that emphasis forced Gondor into a strategy of marching conquest. Gondor became spread so thinly across the countryside it could not hope to retain control over so many territories.
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