Why the Ride of the Rohirrim was a Tactical Disaster! (And How to Fix It) DOCUMENTARY

The documentary begins with a review of the Ride of the Rohirrim as portrayed in Peter Jackson's Movie, The Return of the King, and in Tolkien's original book. We then pick apart the film's depiction frame by frame with all the flaws in the Army of Rohan's charge at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Then we delve into the history of cavalry in combat for a better understanding of how such forces actually behaved in the past. We then finally use this knowledge to reconstruct the Army of Rohan and the Battle of Pelennor Fields in Unreal Engine 5 as it should have been.

You can check out 3D reconstructions of historical armies in our True Size series:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:49 Depiction in the Film
04:59 Sponsor
06:32 Tactical Issues
12:20 Historical Organization
16:40 Historical Formations
21:43 Historical Combat
28:55 Revised Army Model
30:35 Unreal Army
32:22 Revised Attack Model
34:05 Unreal Attack

#history
#documentary
#lordoftherings

[curtissmith]

the real reason why they massed the troops up in the film was because it would have taken another hour for theoden to deliver his speach if it was a 2km long front line.

[theholyinquisition]

In the books there definitely are officers and banners used by the Rohirrim. They also do not charge a line of braced spears. And while there are no definite unit sizes given we can assume them to be a lot smaller than in the movie from some of the descriptions of the battle. The battle unfolds roughly like this:

- Rohan bypasses the blocking force of Orcs with help from local tribesmen.

- They attack the main army of Mordor in multiple columns and destroy the Orcs on the northern half of the battlefield through their surprise attack in the flank.
The Haradrim cavalry tries to meet them head on but are defeated because the Rohirrim have longer lances with Theoden killing the Haradrim chieftain.

- The charge stops because the army has reached the northern city walls.

- The Witch King kills Theoden and is slain by Eowyn. Eomer takes command and rallies the force for a second charge which manages to drive deep wedges into the enemy frontline, but gets halted by the Mumakil.

- The Rohirrim are driven back and partially encircled and prepare to make a dismounted shield wall on a hill for their final stand.

- Aragorn arrives with strong reinforcements from southern Gondor and attacks the army of Mordor in the rear.

- The army of Mordor is crushed between a Hammer (Aragorn) and Anvil (Rohan and the forces from Minas Tirith).

Overall a tactically much more sound battle than the one in the movie.

[ricky]

King Theoden slander shan´t be tolerated

[ed_ELA]

Tactically there were a couple of hobbits, and once an army has hobbits, its over

[vitorpereira]

The Ride worked because those orcs were trained by Ratbag.

[brianhobaugh]

I mean, they were chanting “Death!” They knew they likely weren’t surviving lol. Also, they state in the movie multiple times that they know they are riding to their dooms.

[raphaelmorasch]

In the books it is described quite differently.
With Theodén's forces kind of sneaking in with the help of people from the mountain.
And they then actually charge in single groups (because they split up before) it is upon a totally surprised enemy that has no time to from ranks and from mutliple directions at once.
Bret Deveraux breaks it down quite good in his Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

[darthgorthaur]

The amount of passion you have when saying "we'll agree they deserve to be squashed by the momakil" is so brilliant and lets us know what you truly think 😂😂

[MBP]

Should’ve played the Ride of the Rohirrim in Third Age: Total War smhmh.

[urnldqx]

I love this! Using fiction to teach IRL history/military is a great idea.

Whatever IRL lessons are learnt, doesn't make the scene any less stunning and impactful and epic, AND we get to learn something new ❤

[Crest]

Considering the context of the battle, Theoden was doing pretty good since the orcs were caught off guard by the heavy cavalry charge. Mumakil did the same to Theoden, caught them by surprise n he reacted in the moment

[TemplinInstitute]

This type of slander is unforgiveable.

[jdvstcz]

This video can be summarized in "longher>thicker"

[mikeorick]

A "spear" may also be used to refer to a unit as a "lance" was. It could mean 3-5 men for each spear/lance. No matter what Tolkien had in mind, it sounds like the siege of Vienna in 1683. There an 18, 000 strong cavalry charge led by 3, 000 Polish Winged Hussars hit the Turks, though they were in a checkerboard pattern of squares, not a blob. They cut their way through 50, 000 Turks, fought off counter attacks, and made it all the way to the Turkish camp. ”It was like a flood of black pitch pouring downhill, crushing and burning everything in its way” – Ottoman observer describes the attack of the relief army.

[knight.paladin]

Seems like a lot of y'all would benefit from reading the book, its MUCH more tactically sound, if I recall it involves 3 divisions and an envelopment + the Southrons actually counter-charge Rohan with their cavalry and there's a cavalry battle. Very cool

[josephmclaughlin]

It was always my understanding that Theoden showed up, saw that Minas Tirith had basically already fallen and just decided to go out in a blaze of glory rather than run away back to Rohan to cower in his slowly crumbling forts. The ride of the Rohirrim wasn't supposed to be a tactical engagement, it was basically just suicide by combat. Hence why Theoden didn't really make any actual plan.

[Pangora]

Any war movie where the two armies charged into each other at full speed is probably wrong. Some of these ancient style battles took all day to fight, and you can't do that if your most courageous men run into a wall of wood and steel in the first light of dawn.

[ronniegonzalez]

I think the literal book reasoning behind the charge at the Battle of Pelennor Field is facing the inevitability of death bravely. You don’t yell “Death” three times before doing something if you’re looking for a positive outcome (usually) 😊

[maciejboron]

Fun fact: The winged hussars in many battles (including the relief of Vienna) were riding with relatively big gabs between them and were closing them only were they were really close to the enemy, which extrapolates the point, that you need to have gaps between cavalary.

[spiffygonzales]

A few issues with this

. We DO see banners. Both during and before the charge. Theoden and the people he talked to are commanding the formations, and they also make use of horns to communicate orders.

. Frontal charges aren't this super insane borderline blasphemous idea that a lot of people seem to believe. Obviously they aren't the smartest thing in most situations, but they were most definitely used in a plethora of situations in history. The battle of Montgisard for example where Baldwin defeated Saladin ended in a charge against Saladins forces and despite being greatly outnumbered Baldwin won.

. You contradict yourself when talking about the units being way too deep where you say that units in the back aren't doing anything then later when talking about formations you say they help force the line through. Ultimately this was the goal of the rohirrim (movie wise, not sure about the book), because...

. The entire goal was to force a rout. 1. Orcs and especially goblins are cowardly. And 2. If they didn't rout humanity would lose. They were too outnumbered, the orcs had already taken most of the city, the white wizard was defeated, there were numerous nazgul, and humanity for all respects and purposes was defeated. If Saurons army didn't run than humanity was doomed anyway. They were 6 thousand against whatever was left of the 100+ thousand orcs. Thats why they chanted "death". Because 1. Sauron and/or morgoth convinced man that death was bad when in reality it was a gift from Eru, and they no longer feared it. And 2. Its almost certainly what they were riding towards regardless what tactic they used. You either tried to force a rout in a final hail mary, or you actually try to take on a hundred thousand orcs with only six thousand cavalry.

Actually montgisard like i mentioned is a perfect example here. The orcs outside the city were disorganized, had unfavorable terrain, were tired from all the marching and fighting, and so on. And like montgisard the rohirrim really didn't have much in their favor aside from "God's on our side."

. You ask "how are you going to reform, how are you going to move, really you can only go in one direction". Thats actually the point for them. I want you to think about qhat happens to many of your army wings with thousand of arrows going their way. If you were an orc you'd be a lot less terrified of a bunch of small groups of cavalry and much more terrified seeing the "massive blob" so to speak.

If this was something like 6K rohirrim vs 30k orcs i could see it. But again... This was over one hundred thousand, not even including the reinforcements rohan would've believed were coming from the sea, the easterlings, or the mumakil. Also the wring wraiths. We saw what they could do to units even outside of formations. If they were to attack a massive blob there'd be thousands of spears waiting for them as opposed, lets say, 30.

Good vid regardless.
Edit: "Only the bravest and most well trained horses would ever charge headfirst into spears"
Sir this is Rohan.

Edit 2: also the army of the dead thing isnt as impressive as people seem to think. This is unrelated to the video, but they used to worship sauron (or morgoth i forget) so if aragorn were to keep them its entirely possible, if not likely, that sauron would've corrupted them. And thats assuming that the guys literally called "the oath breakers" decided to just go along with whatever aragorn said anyways.