How Could the Númenóreans Defeat Sauron in the Second Age?

Q: How Could the Númenóreans Defeat Sauron in the Second Age?

ANSWER:This is one of the classic “Tolkien fan questions” that was included in the original news group Frequently Asked Questions document overseen by William Loos in the early 1990s (actually, it was included in the second document, the “Less FAQ”).   After receiving this question I pondered how I might add anything to (what seems to me) one of the most thoroughly discussed topics in the Middle-earth history.

I noticed something peculiar about the Less FAQ’s answer to the question: it only addresses one of the times that Númenór defeated Sauron.  Tolkien mentioned that there were many victories over Sauron’s forces.  For some reason, these details have rarely been included in online discussions of the Sauron-Númenór Question.

The first time Númenór defeated Sauron was during the War of the Elves and Sauron, when Tar-Minastir sent a powerful fleet to reinforce Gil-galad’s armies in Eriador.  Sauron had by that time overrun nearly all of Middle-earth, and he apparently had concentrated his military forces in the northwest, where Gil-galad and his allies (including Dwarves and Men) held out in two refuges (Imladris and Lindon).

Tolkien does not properly describe the full war in any one essay or anecdote.  We must piece everything together from a mix of finished (published in the author’s lifetime) and incomplete sources (published after his death).  For example, we know about Tar-Minastir’s intervention from Appendix A and Appendix B in The Lord of the Rings.  But the details of that intervention only began to come out with The Silmarillion.  The next set of details came in Unfinished Tales of Númenór and Middle-earth.  And finally we learned a few more things in The Peoples of Middle-earth.

Before the war began there were many Elven realms in Middle-earth.  We don’t know how far south they extended but my guess is that Edhellond probably represents the southernmost outpost of Elven culture by the middle of the Second Age.  There may have been Elvish groups living along the Anduin all the way up to the Undeeps (there had been such groups prior to Denethor’s emigration to Beleriand in the First Age).  We know from various accounts that “Sindarin adventurers” had founded many realms among the Silvan Elves.  Of these eastern Elvish enclaves we can be certain of only three that remained by the end of the Third Age: Lothlorien, Thranduil’s realm in Mirkwood, and Dorwinion (which may or may not have been ruled by a Sindarin family).

The first half of the Second Age was also a time of ascendancy for the Men of the northern Vales of Anduin, the relatives of the Beorians and Marachians who had remained on both sides of Greenwood the Great.  The Elves called them “the Free Men of the North”, and at least some of their tribes made an alliance with the Longbeard Dwarves of Khazad-dum.  Other groups related to these Men, living in Eriador, allied themselves with Gil-galad’s realm in Lindon.  And yet other Men living in Eriador may have lived close to but not necessarily in close alliance with Gil-galad’s people.

The Númenóreans began colonizing Middle-earth in Second Age year 1200 and we believe that Lond Daer Enedh (Aldarion’s Vinyalondë) was probably their northernmost haven.  There may have been other settlements in Enedwaith and/or Eriador; there were certainly forts that the Númenóreans built along the Gwathló river.  After Sauron made the One Ring and Gil-galad fortified Eriador the Númenóreans built more forts along the Lhûn and they fortified Tharbad on the border of Eregion.

Although Sauron’s primary objective at the onset of the war was to take Eregion (where most of the Great Rings of Power were still kept in secret), he sent at least one army up through the Vales of Anduin.  The Free Men of the North were devastated and driven into the deep woods or the mountains.  Another army may have attacked the Free Men living east of Greenwood as well.  But the main army marched through Calenardhon and Enedwaith, attacked Eregion, pushed through Tharbad, and drove up into Eriador.  Any Elves who lived outside Eregion must either have fled or perished before Sauron’s advance.  There Sauron divided his forces, sending some of his followers in pursuit of Elrond, who withdrew to Imladris.  Sauron left a garrison at Tharbad and then led the remainder of his army west toward Lindon.

With help from Númenór Gil-galad maintained a frontier along the Lhûn until Tar-Minastir’s fleet arrived.  The admiral, Ciryatur, brought most of his force to Lindon but he sent some ships south to Vinyalondë, and from there they made their way up the river to Tharbad.

What I think we can infer from this account is that Sauron had spread his forces thin.  Also, he had only possessed the One Ring for about 100 years.  How much could he have used the Ring to make himself master over Middle-earth’s other peoples?  The Gwathuirim (ancestors of the Dunlendings and, apparently, the Men of Bree) had allied themselves with Sauron but they do not appear to have been his slaves.  When Sauron burned the forested lands they had hoped to protect against Númenórean demands for lumber they deserted Sauron.  Either Tolkien did not think that through or else he meant that Sauron was not using the One Ring to dominate them the way he dominated the cruel Easterlings who served him at the end of the First Age.

The Eldarin-Númenórean assault upon Sauron’s western army drove his forces back to Sarn Ford on the Baranduin, where he was soundly defeated.  Sauron fell back to Tharbad, but even though reinforced by the Tharbad garrison he now found a Númenórean force in his rear, Ciryatur’s southern army.  The Battle of the Gwathló destroyed most of these Sauronic forces and he withdrew to Calenardhon where the rest of this army was defeated.  The Eldar and Númenóreans then returned to the north where they destroyed the army besieging Elrond in Imladris.  In Unfinished Tales of Númenór and Middle-earth we read that:

…the Númenóreans had tasted power in Middle-earth, and from that time forward they began to make permanent settlements on the western coasts [dated “c. 1800” in the Tale of Years], becoming too powerful for Sauron to attempt to move west out of Mordor for a long time.

This is a critical passage, for it confirms that the Númenóreans were always more powerful than Sauron throughout the Second Age.  It wasn’t just that Ar-Pharazôn suddenly came upon Sauron with an unprecedented host,it was that Númenór was always the greater power.  The reader is of course free to infer that there must have been occasional Númenórean defeats in the lesser battles and campaigns that ensued over the next 1600 years, but the text very clearly makes the point that Númenór was more powerful along the coastlands than Mordor could be for a very long time.

In “Akallabêth” we glimpse something of the capriciousness of Númenórean power late in the Second Age, where Tolkien describes the early career of Numenor’s last king:

…Pharazôn son of Gimilkhâd had become a man yet more restless and eager for wealth and power than his father. He had fared often abroad, as a leader in the wars that the Númenóreans made then in the coastlands of Middle-earth, seeking to extend their dominion over Men; and thus he had won great renown as a captain both by land and by sea. Therefore when he came back to Númenor, hearing of his father’s death, the hearts of the people were turned to him; for he brought with him great wealth, and was for the time free in his giving.

Although the story does not say that Pharazôn was defeating Sauron’s forces in battle, it certainly makes it clear that Númenór’s colonies were not suffering defeat after defeat.  I think the reader is meant to understand that Númenór was a power in Middle-earth, rivaling Gil-galad and Sauron for dominance.  Gil-galad held the north, Sauron held the east, and Númenór held the western coasts south of Lindon.  But it seems to me that the Men of Middle-earth were not yet slavishly devoted to Sauron.  And there is some support for this point of view from Tolkien himself.  For that we must look to the essay titled “Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion”:

Sauron was ‘greater’, effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First. Why? Because, though he was far smaller by natural stature, he had not yet fallen so low. Eventually he also squandered his power (of being) in the endeavour to gain control of others. But he was not obliged to expend so much of himself. To gain domination over Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the physical constituents of the Earth – hence all things that were born on Earth and lived on and by it, beasts or plants or incarnate spirits, were liable to be ‘stained’. Morgoth at the time of the War of the Jewels had become permanently ‘incarnate’: for this reason he was afraid, and waged the war almost entirely by means of devices, or of subordinates and dominated creatures. Sauron, however, inherited the ‘corruption’ of Arda, and only spent his (much more limited) power on the Rings; for it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he desired to dominate. In this way Sauron was also wiser than Melkor-Morgoth…

Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.) Sauron had, in fact, been very like Saruman, and so still understood him quickly and could guess what he would be likely to think and do, even without the aid of palantiri or of spies; whereas Gandalf eluded and puzzled him. But like all minds of this cast, Sauron’s love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron’s right to be their supreme lord), his ‘plans’, the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself…

FOOTNOTE: But his capability of corrupting other minds, and even engaging their service, was a residue from the fact that his original desire for ‘order’ had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his ‘subjects’.

Sauron was not a ‘sincere’ atheist, but he preached atheism, because it weakened resistance to himself (and he had ceased to fear God’s action in Arda). As was seen in the case of Ar-Pharazôn. But there was seen the effect of Melkor upon Sauron: he spoke of Melkor in Melkor’s own terms: as a god, or even as God. This may have been the residue of a state which was in a sense a shadow of good: the ability once in Sauron at least to admire or admit the superiority of a being other than himself. Melkor, and still more Sauron himself afterwards, both profited by this darkened shadow of good and services of ‘worshippers’. But it may be doubted whether even such a shadow of good was still sincerely operative in Sauron by that time. His cunning motive is probably best expressed thus. To wean one of the God-fearing from their allegiance it is best to propound another unseen object of allegiance and another hope of benefits; propound to him a Lord who will sanction what he desires and not forbid it. Sauron, apparently a defeated rival for world-power, now a mere hostage, can hardly propound himself; but as the former servant and disciple of Melkor, the worship of Melkor will raise him from hostage to high priest. But though Sauron’s whole true motive was the destruction of the Númenóreans, this was a particular matter of revenge upon Ar-Pharazôn, for humiliation. Sauron (unlike Morgoth) would have been content for the Númenóreans to exist, as his own subjects, and indeed he used a great many of them that he corrupted to his allegiance.

To sum up, lacking Morgoth’s nihlism, Sauron refrained from trying to destroy every other intelligence around him; and his thinking at the end of the Third Age had progressed well beyond wanting only to achieve order and to improve things for the Children. Hence, in the Second Age his objectives were less Morgothian than they become in the Third Age. In fact, in Letter No. 183 Tolkien summed up Sauron’s progression toward emulating Morgoth in a footnote:

By a triple treachery: 1. Because of his admiration of Strength he had become a follower of Morgoth and fell with him down into the depths of evil, becoming his chief agent in Middle Earth. 2. when Morgoth was defeated by the Valar finally he forsook his allegiance; but out of fear only; he did not present himself to the Valar or sue for pardon, and remained in Middle Earth. 3. When he found how greatly his knowledge was admired by all other rational creatures and how easy it was to influence them, his pride became boundless. By the end of the Second Age he assumed the position of Morgoth’s representative. By the end of the Third Age (though actually much weaker than before) he claimed to be Morgoth returned.

Though his personal power declined due to the two physical deaths he suffered, Sauron succeeded in the Third Age in achieving military supremacy. There was never any hope, as in the Second Age, of defeating his armies on the battlefield without some special advantage, which only presented itself in the form of the lost One Ring.  By the end of the Third Age Sauron was investing more of his strength in directly controlling others because he no longer possessed the One Ring.  When he realized that Gandalf had sent the Ring to Orodruin to be destroyed, Sauron mentally abandoned his slaves, withdrawing his will from directing them:

From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.

In the next chapter Tolkien describes how Sauron’s withdrawal affected his soldiers as they fought Aragorn’s small, vastly outnumbered army:

But the Nazgûl turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor’s shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower; and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid.

It could be argued that Sauron’s slaves always needed larger numbers to defeat their enemies. In fact, in one of the essays published in Morgoth’s Ring Tolkien described how he imagined Morgoth and Sauron’s crushing wills affecting their slaves. They had to concentrate on their servants to keep them totally subservient, but some native strength always welled up if the Dark Lords turned their attention elsewhere.

On the other hand, if Sauron was not forcing himself upon his followers in the Second Age the way he did in the Third Age, they would be less likely to perform with blind obedience, which may explain why Sauron’s armies fled away before Ar-Pharazôn’s huge army at Umbar in Second Age year 3261. Sauron was not yet ready to attempt “full mind-control” over all his followers. He began to develop that strategy during his captivity in Númenór, but he may only have perfected it during the Third Age, when he was able to act with greater impunity against the Númenóreans and their allies.

And so now imagine how Ar-Pharazôn’s final war in Middle-earth may have unfolded in Tolkien’s own thoughts.  Having served in a war himself, Tolkien knew that it would take time for a large army to assemble, especially if most or all of it had to travel far by sea.  So Ar-Pharazôn’s landing at Umbar would have allowed him time to gradually build up his forces.  He would have made small, short penetrations into Sauronian territory, thus alerting his enemies to the presence of his army.  Sauron’s forces would have responded by bringing in as many soldiers as possible.  And then, when they deemed the time right, they would advance upon Umbar itself.  And then Ar-Pharazôn revealed the full strength of his army.  Row upon row of Númenórean companies massed, perhaps high on the hills, their armor glinting in the sunlight.  They could have advanced toward Sauron’s armies like an endless wave of death.  Knowing that this army was led by the most victorious captain in Númenórean history, how could Sauron’s forces have maintained morale and discipline?  They had neither advantage in numbers nor a history of success upon which to build any faith in themselves.  And so slowly, one by one at first, and then unit by unit, they fled away until their battle lines dissolved, leaving the field uncontested to the Númenóreans.

At this point Sauron would have realized that he could never defeat the Númenóreans by war, and so he quickly devised another plan.  He presented himself to Ar-Pharazôn, surrendered, and quietly allowed himself to be led away.  But all the while he was using the One Ring to nudge the Númenóreans onto the road to sacrilege, from which there would be no return.

See also:

• The Sauron Strategies: One War to Win Them All Except …
• The Sauron Strategies: Footsteps Into Failure
• When Was Sauron at His Most Powerful?

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