Skip to main content

In Tolkien's The Hobbit, what army makes the first attack in the Battle of the Five Armies in Chapter 17?

Tension is high in Chapter 17 (The Clouds Burst). In many ways the apex of The Hobbit, the siege of the Lonely Mountain ends when war breaks out between the Five Armies. Bilbo is revealed to have taken the Arkenstone from within the mountain and given it to Bard and the Elvenking to bargain with Thorin. King Thorin is deep in the throes of his gold-lust, changed by his greed to keep all the gold and treasures from the mountain for himself and his fellow dwarves. To get the Arkenstone back, Thorin promises to give a fourteenth share of the gold to Bard and his people, all the while hoping to be able to withhold the gold if his kinsmen arrive in time, led by Dain. When Dain arrives, his army is about to begin an assault on the elves and men to try and get through the siege and into the Lonely Mountain to join Thorin.



But he reckoned without the dwarves... they guessed the hesitation of Bard and his friends, and resolved to strike while they debated. Suddenly without a signal they sprang forward to attack. Bows twanged and arrows whistled; battle was about the be joined.



While Dain's army made the first attack in the chapter, they are not the instigator in the Battle of Five Armies, since the last two armies (the goblins and the wolves) have yet to arrive. Gandalf immediately calls for a ceasefire right after the dwarves release the first volley of arrows, and announces that the goblins, led by Bolg, are almost upon them riding on the wild wolves. This unifies the men, elves, and dwarves against a common enemy.


The first attack of the Battle of the Five armies (but not the first attack of the chapter, which was instigated by Dain's dwarves) was instigated by both the goblins and wolves, at the same time (since the goblins were riding on the wolves) and countered by men.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more