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Historical Motivations for the Siege of Minas Tirith

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Historical Motivations for the Siege of Minas Tirith Volume 10 Number 1 Article 14 4-15-1983 Historical Motivations for the Siege of Minas Tirith Jefferson P. Swycaffer Independent Scholar Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Swycaffer, Jefferson P. (1983) "Historical Motivations for the Siege of Minas Tirith," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 10 : No. 1 , Article 14. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol10/iss1/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Traces possible historical models for the Siege of Minas Tirith, particularly the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Additional Keywords Constantinople, Siege of (1453)—Relation to Minas Tirith; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Settings—Minas Tirith; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings—Depiction of strategy; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields.” This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol10/iss1/14 MYTHLORE 35: Spring 1983 page 47 H istorical M otivations f o r the Siege of M inas Tirith Jefferson P. Swycaffer A 'siege parallel' is the technical term for a The corsairs of Unbar operate from a base very type of trench, which is dug to provide cover while similar to that from which the Barbary Pirates fared, besieging a city. Instead of 'siege paralles,' in what is now Tunisia. The grasslands of Rohan can be however, I would like to deal here with two 'parallel compared to the Hungary of the Magyars, who were weak s ie g e s .' allies of Byzantine Constantinople. Dol Amroth makes a fine Venice. Isergard is Rome. Minas Tirith, in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, was the greatest city of Middle-earth. It The political geography is equally analogous. The covered a v ita l waterway between north and south; it alliances that come forth in Tolkien's retelling of the had ties with its neigh bors in the grasslands to the siege are a wash-fulfillment story of the purest sort. north-west; and it under went a climactic siege at the Hungary's John Hunyadi, a nobleman under the extremely end of the age. weak King Ladislas V of Hungary, was far too bus defending Belgrade against the incidental Turkish The same is true in reality of the city of invasion that came at the time of Constantinople'| Constantinople. Constantinople, which was indeed the siege, to come to any Theoden-like last minute rescue.2 greatest city of human history, fell in the year 1453, Dol Amroth's counterpart of Venice was too caught up in and that fa ll marked the end of the Middle Ages. the notion of being rid of Constantinople as a Constantinople was, by that time, well into its commercial rival to be devoted to sending help, decline. Its enemies had, over the centuries, although eventually some help did materialize. The encroached steadily upon its most vital holdings, Pope of Rome, Nicholas V, did urge Europe to help, but especially in the east. Finally, at the time of the his exhortation was deliberately phrased weakly, sieg e, what had once been an empire had shrunk to because of the Rooman Catholic mistrust of the Greek l i t t l e more than one highly fortified c ity , huddled Orthodox church. Perhaps that is why Tolkien casts the behind walls that were believed to be impregnable. Pope of Rome as the Satanic Sarunan, a ll greed and ambition. Gandalf, though, is the wish-fulfillment The same is true in the story of Minas Tirith. Rope, not only of the rescue, but of the reunification. When, through his works, the Kingdoms of Gondor and In Humphrey Carpenter's collection of The Letters Arnor are united, the true wash is that the Bnpire of of J.R.R. Tolkien, we find Tolkien describing Gondor in Byzantium and the Holy Roman Bnpire — i .e . France and the following terms: the Germanies — to a fully mobilized aid of the threatened city, taking the time to depose the old Pope "Gondor rises to a peak of power, almost whose betrayal of Christendom is blasphemous. reflecting numenor, and then fades slowly to decayed Middle Age, and kind of proud, venerable, but Sauron is not a bad characterization, from a increasingly impotent Byzantium. The watch upon Mordor Western point of view, o f Mohammed II of the Ottomans, is relaxed. The pressure of the Easterlings and and, seen from Europe, the difference between Turks and Southrons increases." Ores is vanishing, just as the names are the same. Tolkien was ever one for mixed metaphors, although Mohammed II was a young Turkish Sultan, twenty u su sa lly w ell-tu rn ed . Minas T irith has i t s three at the time of the siege, and already known as resemblances to Ancient Egypt, (Ibid.) Florence, and, 'The blood-drinker,' (Ibid.) yet whose excesses hardly at lea st in the minds of the a r tists, Mont St. Michel seemed the same as the c h illy grandeur of Sauron. in France. But the resemblance to Constantinople is This, however, is historical hindsight. Tb the people one of the more thoroughly sustained metaphors in the of Constantinople, he must have seemed a supernatural book, and the remarkable depth of the parallel shows thing indeed, certainly at the time of the siege. throughout The Lord of the Rings, appearing in places that one would hardly expect. The historical antecedents are clear. Numenor is a fallen Rome, so that Minas Tirith's status is Much has been said about the sim ilarity of the precisely parallel to Constantinople's diminished geography of Middle-earth to the geography of Fifteenth status and fervent claims to the true heritage of the Century Europe. There is a strange, degormed Rome of the Caesars. While, again, Tolkien uses resemblance, which has been compared to the twisted metaphors mixed to near-opacity, and throws in visions of the fledgling cartographers. If the allusions to Atlantis and to Egypt, Numenor remains mapmakers of the next century still insisted on more Rome-like as seen by Minas Tirith than anything imagining California to be an island, we can understand else. Osgiliath I tend to dismiss as a false note, how the maps of Middle-earth could be similarly wrarped. although if one chooses to force the analogy, it makes a fine Adrianople. I don't believe that Tolkien ever carried it out that far himself, but his conscious and Most vital, though, is the situation of Minas deliberate use of the other p arallels mentioned seems Tirith facing the box-shape of Mordor, and how this is undeniable. A similar and final speculation is that completely analogous to Constantinople facing the box- the great alliance of men and elves at the end of the shape of Asia Minor. Between them flows the Bosphorus- Second Age is somehow similar to the period of the lik e — Anduin river. Crusades. page 48 MYTHLORE 35: Spring 1983 What is clearly purposeful is Tolk ien 's use of the hundred pounds. It could be fired no more than seven lost holdings across the dividing water: Ithilien. times in one day, due to the extensive preparations Wien (Constantinople lo st a ll of Asia Minor in a three- necessary for loading it, and its report shook the century retreat, the loss of the nearer coast was the ground for four miles. Early in the siege it misfired, most disasterous. C ities that had been Greek since the and Urban was killed by the explosion.4 In addition, time of Alexander f e ll , at a blow, to the advancing Mohammed had other cannons, including fourteen Ottomans. batteries of four superbombards each. (Ibid., p. 6.) No mortal walls of stone could r e sist. And Constantinople was indeed impotent. The siege was settled around its massive walls without hindrance What, then, could be a better comparison for from armies in the fie ld . Tblkien's Grond, hammer of the underworld? That tr o ll- served device, unholy and somewhat loud, shattered the The most telling parallels come in the actual gate of Minas Tirith as nothing else could have, with mechanics of the sieg e of Minas T irith . The every b it the impact and noise of Urban's cannon. Even concentric walls of Constantinople were regarded as the the physical descriptions are quite similar. best fortifications in the world, better, in fact, than the Great Wall of China, i f not as extensive. The Again, though, the time scale is distorted. For defenders represented the best that Europe had to each time the Turkish cannon knocked down a section of offer.
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