Q: How Many Armies Fought in the Battle of Five Armies?
ANSWER: The standard answer is “five armies” but there never seems to be much agreement on what the armies were. In fact, searching for an answer to questions like “what are the five armies in the hobbit” thus leads one to very sketchy answers. For example, everyone agrees that Thranduil and the Wood-elves constituted one army; Bard and the Men of the Long Lake constituted another army; and Dain’s 500 Dwarves constituted a third army. And some Websites also claim that Bilbo assigns a number of 10,000 warriors to the “good” side but that is not true.
But then people cannot figure out where the bats that accompany the Orcs and Wargs are supposed to fit in. And what about the Eagles of the Misty Mountains? Even if you count the Orcs and Wargs as one army that still leaves an army of bats and an army of eagles.
Some people would say just treat the Orcs, Wargs, and bats as one army. But others argue that the Orcs and Wargs are really two separate armies. And if that is the case then if you ignore the eagles and bats you have five armies.
Of course, Beorn shows up alone but according to John Rateliff in The History of The Hobbit Tolkien had Beorn show up with a troop of bears (and the published book does imply that Beorn associates with a large number of “dancing” bears) at one point. So was Beorn’s original troop of bears supposed to be an army too?
The most rational explanation appears to combine the Orcs, Wargs, and bats together as a single army because they arrived together — but then, Bard and Thranduil brought their armies together, too. However, since Bolg appears to have had sole command over all the evil creatures it seems reasonable to accept that there was only one army on the evil side and that the Eagles thus constituted the fifth army.
Beorn was just a wild bear who wandered in out of the forest.
But what about Bilbo? Does his presence in the battle mean there was a Hobbit army (of one) present?
Enquiring minds will probably never be able to agree on the exact details of this very troubling issue, but if you are writing fan fiction or a role-playing adventure you can take some liberties in identifying which are the five armies in the battle. Heck, if I were writing fan fiction, I would probably even have some characters argue about how many armies fought in the battle of “five” armies.
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Um… it does say “it was called the Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible. Upon one side were the Goblins and the wild Wolves, and upon the other were Elves and Men and Dwarves” (‘The Clouds Burst’). So those are the Five. The Bats are auxiliaries of the Orcs. Some Orcs ride on wolves, but the Wargs are an independent force, in a voluntary alliance as explained in an earlier chapter. They come in the Goblins’ “train”, but that just means behind them. Later some fight alongside Bolg’s bodyguard.
Yes the Eagles are a sort of sixth Army. I guess it would just have looked silly in the Annals of the Third Age: one not-even-remotely-human Army was quite enough. Same goes for the Bats. Beorn and Bilbo (and Gandalf) are, as you say, single warriors not Armies.
I think Tolkien fell in love with the idea of “five armies” and he didn’t want to reclassify everything. 🙂
But this is a real question that has been “batted around” in the past (I ask no punnish pardoning).