grundyscribbling:

cycas:

zealouswerewolfcollector:

Why did Thranduil (and the Lake-men) feel the need to bring an army against thirteen dwarves and one hobbit?

(Also, really, Bilbo? You don’t like the dwarves’ songs because they’re warlike, but the army besieging the mountain is fine because the elven songs are pretty?)

I assumed that Thranduil brought an army partly because kings travel with warbands.   

But also because he’s a king who has been slowly losing ground to Dol Guldur, it’s weird creepy darkness and the giant spiders for centuries.  Even his kingdom is now called Mirkwood now rather than Greenwood. 

Geographically, he’s almost entirely encircled by enemies. His route to Rivendell through the mountains is now cut off by the goblins of the Misty Mountains, the old trade route through the forest is abandoned and impassable. The North is full of goblins too.  Dol Guldur is between him and Lorien, his only remaining trade route is via Laketown, and clearly his people are dependent on it. 

He heard the Dragon fell… on Laketown.  So, he just lost his last remaining connection to the outside world, and he knows that the treasure of Erebor is going to attract a lot of interested eyes. 

I don’t think he expected to be fighting 13 dwarves and a hobbit: I think he assumed they were already dead. 

I think he came out to fight the orc-armies that he assumed would descend on Erebor as soon as Smaug was dead, which would cut off his last route to the outside world (since Laketown had just fallen) and leave him completely encircled. 

It’s explicit in the book that Thranduil thought the dwarves were dead before he set out from his own halls. He expected to be dealing with whoever was going to come after the treasure of Thror (and recall that Sauron’s just been driven out of Dol Guldur  – so it’s entirely possible that there may well be orcs/goblins/etc on the move), not to find that Thorin Oakenshield was still alive. His initial idea was to claim some of the treasure for himself.

But Thranduil turned aside from that plan when he received messages from Bard. He moved swiftly to help the people of Laketown, who lest we forget, urgently needed his aid.

Look at what we’re told about the people of Laketown during and after Smaug’s attack:

Already men were jumping into the water on every side. Women and children were being huddled into laden boats in the market-pool. Weapons were flung down…soon all the town would be deserted and burned down to the surface of the lake.

Then the dying Smaug fell onto the town he had previously been smashing and setting fire to: Full on the town he fell. His last throes splintered it to sparks and gledes. The lake roared in.

Then later, on shore: But they really had much to be thankful for, had they thought of it…three quarters of the people of the town had at least escaped alive; their woods and fields and pastures and cattle and most of their boats remained undamaged; and the dragon was dead.

Shelters could be contrived for few (the Master had one) and there was little food (even the Master went short). Many took ill of wet and cold and sorrow that night, and afterwards died, who had escaped uninjured from the ruin of the town; and in the days that followed there was much sickness and great hunger.

From these quotes, we can see a few things: first and foremost, the town itself was destroyed completely, but its people were not. Three quarters of them survived. What’s more, the environs of Laketown – its onshore areas including fields, pastures, and livestock –  were unscathed because Smaug was saving them for later. So this was still a place that would be attractive to either raiders or other groups attempting to move in and turf the remaining Lake-people out. 

We also see there was a desperate lack of food and shelter. It was already late autumn. (Durin’s Day, when the keyhole of the secret entrance to the Mountain can be seen, is the first day of the last moon of autumn on the threshold of winter.) The people of Laketown had lost not only their homes and livelihoods, but also any food stores they had built up for the winter. They may still have their fields, but most of those fields have likely been harvested already; they have cattle, but slaughtering them all immediately for food is not a good solution either. What’s more, It’s likely many of the survivors were also short on clothing, shoes, etc since the dragon attacked by night and without warning. It’s unlikely many Laketowners kept go bags, so they would have escaped with themselves, the clothes on their back, and whatever might have been close to hand that you could grab on the way out the door. 

Moreover, it’s not just food and shelter they don’t have. Among their other lacks are these: adequate weapons with which to defend themselves, since men who have to swim for it are not going to burden themselves with unnecessary weight even if they hadn’t already cast down their weapons; much of the equipment they used for fishing or hunting; most of the tools with which to construct better shelters or new equipment; whatever stocks they had of supplies used by their healers. These things likely all went down with the town. (I’m assuming that if Laketown had smithies or other workshops on shore, that would have been counted in with the things they had to be thankful for.)

So the survivors were in a pretty desperate position, and easy pickings for orcs, goblins, or even other groups of Men who may hear about the destruction of Laketown and try to move in on the presumably now depopulated area. And if you think I’m overstating all this, look at the last quote. It’s explicit that the survivors of Laketown were dying – from cold, from lack of food, and from sickness spreading through a stressed population.

In short, the survivors of Laketown urgently needed help – and Thranduil responded. Look at what Bard says when Thorin demands the elves leave: “The Elvenking is my friend, and he has succoured the people of the Lake in their need, though they had no claim but friendship on him,” answered Bard. 

The reason the two armies marched together to the Mountain is that while they left some of the elves and skilled men back at the Lake guarding the women, children, old, and unfit, not to mention working flat out on a new town and better shelters for the winter, they hoped to be able to claim some of the treasure from what they believed to be an empty Mountain to restore Esgaroth and get the survivors back on their feet.

What’s more, let’s remember that some of the treasure in the Mountain was rightfully property of the Lakemen (or at least, those of them that were descendants of the men of Dale, Bard chief among them.) It was made clear that Smaug had added what he plundered from the ruins of Dale to his hoard. With the expectation that the dwarves were dead, Bard had every right to march to that mountain to get what was his and his people’s. He and Thranduil were genuinely surprised to find the dwarves (and Bilbo) still alive. 

The siege came about because Thorin was being unreasonable – he refused to acknowledge Bard’s right to any of the treasure, or to do the right thing and help the Lake-men even though the Lake-men had helped him and his party despite doubts about them being who they said they were. And in contrast to Thorin, who was actively preparing for armed confrontation and was the first to initiate violence by shooting at a messenger, the siege was passive – all Bard and Thranduil’s forces did was block anyone from getting into or out of the Mountain until Thorin was willing to talk. He had his treasure, but they had the food. They had every expectation there would be a non-violent resolution when Thorin & company got hungry enough.