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Cari
Bree
Oct 20 2016, 5:29pm
Post #1 of 5
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Charge of the Rohirrim and the Battle of Vienna
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I'm a history major in college focusing on classical history, but I have recently been learning about the Battle of Vienna. It gave me the question of whether or not this battle may have inspired the famous charge of the Rohirrim in RotK. The Polish charge was the largest cavalry charge in military history and Tolkien surely knew about the battle.
Is there any indication that this may be the case?
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squire
Half-elven
Oct 20 2016, 6:26pm
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It's generally thought that Tolkien had the episode in mind...
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...although I don't know that Tolkien ever himself acknowledged a connection. In our last discussion of the battle, I inserted a question to see if anyone saw any similarities, but it didn't inspire any chat (discussion thread here, see question L at the very bottom of the page).
Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle-earth, suggests similarities also with the earlier, and more in line with Tolkien's love of early medieval sources, Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (which I discovered when looking up this question in Hammond & Scull's LotR Reader's Companion, p. 563).
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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hanne
Lorien
Oct 21 2016, 12:33am
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Shame we didn't respond at the time. I remember thinking that the maps you posted were great.
You inspired me to take a peek at Wikipedia. I am sure that Tolkien invented his own charge, but it's interesting to see the elements that make people think he was inspired by these two battles.
Elements of the 1683 Battle of Vienna that sound Rohirric:
The mounted army emerged from a forest.
There was a massive number of horsemen (18,000).
The besieged garrison made a sortie in response to the charge.
It was all over within three hours.
(But, they were expected, they charged downhill.)
Elements of the 451 Battle of the Catalaunian Plains that sound Rohirric:
The attacking king was killed and thrown from his horse.
His name was Theodoric and he fell "where the dead lay thickest".
The name "Goth" features.
So do heroic songs.
(But both sides spend a day setting up their positions, the cavalry charge was not a deciding factor.)
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Cari
Bree
Oct 21 2016, 12:59am
Post #4 of 5
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Those are some interesting thoughts. Although the battle may not have inspired the rohirrim charge, it is very fascinating to see the parallels between the two battles. Maybe Tolkien just knew how to make a very dramatic and fitting scene for breaking a siege :P
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emre43
Rohan
Oct 25 2016, 12:31pm
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I think it was based on the battle of the Catalaunian Plains
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plains
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoric_I
I never killed a man who didn't need killing
- Clay Allison
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