The Sauron Strategies: Footsteps into Failure - Page 7
© Michael Martinez
Gil-galad's lack of ambition was Sauron's saving grace. While Gil-galad probably concentrated on healing the lands and peoples Sauron had nearly destroyed in the war, Sauron invested his time in developing new resources. And he did not forget the Dwarves. Having seized the Nine and the Seven Rings of Power from the Gwaith-i-Mirdain in Eregion, Sauron perverted the Rings and gave them out to Men and Dwarves. Three of the Rings were given to Numenoreans, possibly to captains or lords who led new colonization efforts in Middle-earth. Although the Numenoreans had begun making permanent havens around the year 1200, they began "establishing dominions on the coast [of Middle-earth]" around the year 1800 ("Tale of Years").
By dispensing Rings of Power to Men and Dwarves in the east, where he already had influence, Sauron probably achieved ironclad control over many lands very quickly, within the space of a few years or generations. Although the Men who received Rings eventually became wraiths, the Dwarven lords could not be so corrupted. And yet, the essay "Dwarves and Men" (published in The Peoples of Middle-earth) implies that all the eastern Dwarven peoples may have fallen into evil. If Sauron could not have dominated the Dwarves through their Rings, he may nonetheless have won influence and friendship among them through the bestowal of such gifts.
The Rings given to the western Dwarves are a more complicated issue. There is no indication that any of them ever fell into evil. Their Rings may have been the foundation of great hoards (and the implication of that tradition, recorded in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings, is that the kingly houses of the Ered Luin not only survived but thrived in the Second Age). How did Sauron manage to give Rings of Power to the Dwarves? And when? He clearly did not visit them in the capacity of his former persona. Durin III, at least, should have resisted any such attempts at bribery.
The whole business with redistributing the stolen Rings of Power smacks of a poorly thought-out "Plan B". Sauron did not quite know what to do. He needed more powerful servants through whom to conquer Middle-earth, but those servants did not present him with advantages over the Elves. In fact, although Sauron continued to attack the Elves throughout the next 1300 years or so, he never again mounted the kind of massive campaign against the Eldar that he had attempted in the war. Why?
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