Gondor and Ancient Rome

The parallel between Gondor and Rome is hardly worth bringing up - it is just so obvious. But there is one feature of them that is particularly striking and on which a key plot feature of the Lord of the Rings hinges. Gondor was the southern branch of the much larger realm of the exiled Numenoreans. This split of an empire into two related ones which nonetheless maintain a connection is one that sounds like a piece of pure fiction. Emperors don't often split their empires up, not willingly at any rate. Any half decent ruler wants to ruler a bigger area not a smaller one. So you will have to look hard into history to find a precedent. But there is one. And it is in that most Gondor-like of empires, Rome. The emperor Theodosius was the last to rule both halves of the empire. He had many qualities that Tolkien would have approved of. He sorted out religious dissent firmly and established the Church with a set of standards based on the Nicene creed. He made Christianity the official religion of the empire. I can imagine that the catholic JRR would have been quite happy under Theodosius. On his death he split it between his two sons Arcadius and Honorius. From then on the split become permanent until the final extinction of the Western Empire at the hands of the Goths. The Eastern Roman Empire continued for another thousand years in Constantinople. Greek became the language of the empire and the culture drifted away from its latin roots. But right up until the end the emporers continued to think of themselves as and call themselves Romans. I imagine that a descendant of Julius Ceaser who turned up in the fifteenth century when the empire was basically just the city of Constinople, might well have been welcomed as a saviour in the same way as Aragorn at Minas Tirith.

The Boy stood on the Burning Deck

The Boy stood on the Burning Deck is a Victorian poem by Elizabeth Bishop. To modern ears it is cheesy and melodramatic but was incredibly popular for at least 100 years after it was written in 1950. It commemorates the destruction of the french flagship L'Orient in the battle of the Nile. L'Orient was a huge ship by the standards of the day and was much bigger and better armed than anything in Nelson's fleet. It could only be tackled by two warships from either side with any chance of success. The French sailors were skillful and experienced and there is no reason to doubt that they were the equal of the English so this duel was both deadly and key to the outcome of the battle. In the event, the English succeeded in setting alight to it. Hence the burning deck from which all had to flee. But despite the flames the French gunners heroically stayed at their posts to continue firing. Amongst the officers in charge below decks at this moment was a Captain Casabianca, whose 9 year old son was also part of the crew. But despite the bravery of the crew, a magazine deep in the ship was ignited causing a huge explosion. The noise was so loud it was heard in Alexandria 25 miles away. The shock was so great the battle paused for 30 minutes while the very few survivors were rescued. The hardened sailors of the two fleets were hardly mild mannered men so this shows just how huge a calamity it was. The story grew up that the English sailors had seen a small boy on the burning deck of the doomed vessel shortly before it blew up. From these facts the story of a boy refusing to abandon his post without the permission of his father grew up. From this story the poem was written. Tolkien would certainly have known the poem well when he was growing up. The interesting thing is just how Tolkienesque the theme of this poem is. The boy prefers death in the flames to disobeying his father. Think of Beregond and his cruel dilemma when Denethor wanted to be burnt along with Faramir. There is the conflict between obeying orders and common sense. And there is the fire playing a prominent part. It doesn't seem too far fetched to think that Tolkien had this poem somewhere in the back of his mind when he was writing this bit of the Lord of the Rings?

The Scouring of the Shire

In many ways 1688 was the most remarkable years of English history. In 1684 James II had unexpectedly become king following the death of his brother Charles II. Charles was known as the merry monarch and was a sort of royal dandy. It wasn't known during his reign that he had all along been a closet Catholic and his deathbed conversion to Rome had been a huge shock to his subjects, with whom he had generally been popular. His brother was an out Catholic. This was both unpopular and constitutionally tricky. The King of England is also the head of the Church of England. Luckily James was already in his fifties and had no heir. The next in line to the throne was a Protestant. The problem was therefore going to sort itself out in time so it seemed bearable. But Jame's promotion of Catholics and persecution of the official Church, which was loved by the majority of the population of England, must have seemed an attack on the very fabric of society. Everything changed in 1688 when James' Catholic wife gave birth to a son. Now there was the prospect of not just a few more years of agony, but the real possibility of another Catholic monarch reigning for a long time. This was not to be borne. But it left the loyal subjects with the ultimate divided loyalty. Did they support their Church or their King? England at this time did not have a standing army so James was vulnerable to a popular uprising. Basically his position depended to a large extent on consent from his subjects - and he was well award of this. His solution to this was to bring across Catholic Irishmen to form a loyal army. He calculated that he could rely on troops that shared his religion and had a natural dislike of the English as well. This incendary situation could easily have led to bloodshed. Only forty years before the country had suffered years of civil war, and no doubt there were enough old soldiers still alive to have provided the know-how for a new conflict. But in the event, although there was drama aplenty there was almost no fighting. Some leading English citizens sent a suggestion to William of Orange, the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, that he should land with an army whereupon the population would welcome him and offer him the throne. At this time William was fighting a war of survival against France. He had to make the decision - should he risk taking his army to England? If he did so and got entangled in a civil war he could leave his country unprotected from his enemy. But the prize of winning over England to his side was great. He took the risk and set sail for England, knowing that he risked losing everything including his own country's independence. The English Channel is very narrow near Dover and it was impossible to pass it unobserved by day but as the chance of time and tide had it the flotilla happened to go by during the long winter hours of darkness. William chose to light the lamps on all his ships to clearly signal to onlookers on shore that he was on his way. He landed in Dorset on the 5th of November. As it happened this was the day devoted by the Church of England to celebrate the unsuccessful attempt by Catholics to blow up the Houses of Parliament. As the news of the landing spread huge bonfires were lit and fireworks let off. This was the first time that the event had been celebrated in this way and the tradition of bonfires and fireworks on the fifth of November which continues to this day in England dates back to 1688. Landing unopposed by the powerful English fleet was lucky, but William was now in the position of invading a large kingdom which on paper had considerable resources available to defend itself. William was in a position to give battle if need be, but if he did he would be possibly harming his legitimacy as a saviour, and also weakening the kingdom he was hoping to take over. What he did therefore was to move very slowly and to avoid battle while waiting for the population to come over to his side. This happened more slowly than he wanted but he did begin to pull over both the ordinary people of the west of England and increasing numbers of the upper classes and the establishment. For James it must have been agonising watching his authority slip away as more and more people went over to William. The last straw seems to have been when his top general, John Churchill, defected. Churchill, an ancestor of Winston, was both an important military expert and also a personal fried of the king. Now that his army had started to disintegrate James fled, stopping to throw the Great Seal in the Thames. Having got right to the point of a potentially murderous civil war, England succeeded in changing its government with hardly any bloodshed. The potential harm that could have come from a conflict is easy to imagine by looking at Ireland where the same process was far from peaceful and where the bitterness arising from it was still causing problems even a couple of years ago. It is not hard to see why the men at the time called it the Glorious Revolution. It has been forgotten to some extent today when compared to the Civil War and the two World Wars which have more action to them. but when Tolkien was growing up it a more prominent bit of history. As someone who was interested in folklore he can hardly have been unaware of the rhymes that date from the period like The Grand Old Duke of York. For this reason I think that it was this period in English history he was thinking of when he wrote the Scouring of the Shire. The re-establisment of the legitimate church and the banishing of a tyrant all sound like very Lord of the Rings themes. And the atmosphere in the Shire has great parallels. The English put up with the privations at first, but when things got too much it only needed a small prod to stir them up. Much the same as the hobbits in the Shire. The other strong parallel is the determination to avoid violence as far as possible. And some of the details have parallels as well. The central role of bonfires for instance. Tolkien may not have been consciously modelling the Scouring of the Shire on the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But I can't believe that what he had heard about it didn't have some influence on him.

Who was Sauron?

I read LOTR for the first time as a teenager in the Seventies, and back then there was no doubt in my mind who Sauron was. An evil tyrant who wanted to dominate the World, it could only be Adolf Hitler. For years I always thought of Sauron as being a manifestation in Middle Earth of the bogey man I had grown up with. It wasn't until years afterwards that I realised that the whole concept behind the book predated the Second World War by many decades. (I know it is there in the foreword, so I have no excuses but that is the way it was.) The fact that Tolkien himself was clear that the War of the Ring was not an allegory of the Second World War did really register at the time. But now I have had time to think about and to know more about how long it takes for an idea to form, I realise that I was certainly wrong. Sauron could not have been modelled on Hitler. So if it wasn't Hitler who inspired Sauron, who was it? There aren't a great many characters in history who really fit the bill as a Sauron prototype. Stalin is eliminated on the same chronological grounds as Hitler himself. And in any case Stalin never really fitted the bill. Hitler was a charasmatic evil wizard like figure who really seemed to have some kind of demonic power. Stalin always comes across more as a bureaucrat than an inspirational leader. No doubt he was just as eviil, but not really as interesting. Tolkien fought in the First World War, and there are many echoes of that conflict in LOTR. Could it be that Sauron was a personification of Kaiser Wilhelm. I don't think this really stacks up. The Kaiser's personality is pretty weak and it wasn't really his willpower that motivated the German armies in the First War. I don't think that anyone outside of propaganda departments would ever really think of him as the embodiment of evil. I think the only real choice is Napoleon. Tolkien was English and would not have been an admirer of Napoleon. Napoleon has never had a good press in England. He attempted to conquer the World and did it with huge elan but also with a depth of ruthlessness and agility that match Sauron pretty well. His victories are so amazing as to be almost magical and his very personal style of leadership really brings to mind the way Sauron could move his troops to do his will. Napoleon, like Sauron, was compelled to capitulate after a titanic struggle. The battle of Waterloo must have seemed to Tolkien very much the way the Last Battle before the Barad-Dur is portayed. And when the British got their hands on Napoleon they were still so scared of his wizard like powers that they had to imprison him on an island miles from anywhere to avoid him making a comeback. It is a shame that Ar-Pharazon (check name) didn't think of that instead of taking him back to Numenor at the end of the Second Age. Interestingly, when the British got Napoleon onto one of their warships they were careful to keep him away from London and the Prince Regent. They were scared that his huge charisma would be sufficient to charm the Prince Regent. And once he had him under his spell who knows what further evil he get up to. When I heard that I instantly thought of the way Sauron was able to bewitch the king of Numenor and all his councilors.