They ought to be in pretty identifiable groupings, since you want to keep the men who know each other close together.
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4.96.1).Īs for the army, the one strange thing is that the Gondorians and Rohirrim are intermixed almost at random, which undermines their cohesion. Generals might sometimes give the same speech over and over as they moved down the line, to speak to the entire army (e.g. Aragorn being on a horse delivering this is fine, but he paces around in circles, rather than riding up or down the line. This speech is actually not too bad it acknowledges the fear of the men, but then explains a reason for confidence (albeit somewhat flimsy). Aragorn giving his speech at the end of Return of the King. We also have a couple of cases where dialogue fills the same purpose, like Faramir’s “Where Does My Allegiance Lie” line to Gandalf in RotK and (as we’ll discuss in a moment) the interplay between Théoden, Gimli and Aragorn prior to the Battle of Helm’s Deep in TT. The most notable is the “Men of the West” speech given by Aragorn towards the end of Return of the King, but there’s also Théoden’s “Arise, Riders of Théoden” speech (book version discussed below) before his cavalry charge, and of course Saruman’s “To War” speech in The Two Towers. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is studded with a set of notable pre-battle speeches, or spots where the dialogue fills in for one. And if you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email updates or follow me on twitter for updates as to new posts as well as my occasional ancient history, foreign policy or military history musings. Where do these speeches come from? Do they have historical precedents? What was the normal structure of such a speech? Do they work? And how does morale play into the conclusion of this battle?Īs always, if you like what you are reading here, please share it if you really like it, you can support me on Patreon. So this week, what we’re going to take a look at a perennial trope of war literature and the most obvious way that commanders are shown to intervene in their troop’s morale: the battle speech.
Total war rome ii emperor edition error series#
Now, we have already discussed many of the factors that go into morale and cohesion, in this series and the previous one. But as you all remember from our Siege of Gondor series weapons are often not the determinant element in our battles and they never are in the battles of Middle Earth battles turn on morale. Last time, we looked at the weapons and armor of the film sequence (and to a lesser extent, the books).
Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of the same name. This is the seventh part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep ( I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII.