The War of Wrath is a mysterious event.
The Silmarillion tells us that it occurred some time after the Feanorians destroyed the haven at Arvernien.
The War of the Jewels tells us it began in the year 545 of the First Age of the Sun and that the war lasted for 42 years. The account in
The Silmarillion, compressed by Christopher Tolkien from earlier texts, says very little. The armies of Morgoth were vanquished in an unspecified number of battles, and then the Host of Valinor approached Angband, only to be driven back by the winged dragons. Eventually, Earendil and the Eagles of Manwe defeated the dragons.
And that's about it. After the dragons were defeated, the Valar (or their army) ransacked Angband, freed Morgoth's thralls, and took him prisoner. 42 years' worth of history are related in the space of a few paragraphs. And J.R.R. Tolkien always intended it to read that way, because his histories are derived mostly from the Elves and Men who participated in the events reported in the tales. The War of Wrath is an exception to this convention, because the narrative states that those Elves who remained free (on the Isle of Balar) did not take part in the war. And these were the Elves who stayed in Middle-earth and conveyed their histories to the Dunedain.
Still, some people insist, it would be nice if we knew how Tolkien envisioned the War of Wrath.
And you know what? We may indeed have some clues about the way it should have unfolded. That is, Tolkien did once write about an Elven war, in which the Eldar marched into mortal lands to defeat Melko. This was not the Last Battle, of which much has been made through the years by readers and critics alike. Rather, the Elven war was part of the mythology from
The Book of Lost Tales, and is called "the Faring Forth (of the Eldar)" or "the March of the Elves of Kor". This earlier tradition bears only a vague resemblance to the War of Wrath, but it sheds some light on the traditions which might have been utilized to construct the tale of the war.
In
The Book of Lost Tales, the wanderer Eriol is told that the Vala Ulmo saved Earendel (sic) from the ruin of Gondolin so that he might sail west and find Valinor. But Earendel reached Valinor too late: the Elves had already left. Christopher Tolkien pieces together an interesting narrative of the Faring Forth. It appears that when birds from Gondolin reached Elfinesse (sic) with news of the city's destruction, Ingwe, King of all the Eldar, defied the Valar and led the Elves of Kor in a march to the Great Lands (there is no "Middle-earth" in
The Book of Lost Tales). There the Elves fought a great war with Melko (Melkor --> Morgoth),
and lost. And the Valar left the Elves to their fate, except for Tulkas.
