Black Gate

Naturally, this was meant to keep the enemies of Mordor out while allowing allied armies free reign to move as they please. The downside is that more concessions to ease of movement are needed to make the Black Gate work. Features like raised entrances work great for castles - which can be expected to have minimal numbers of people coming in and out. A castle can see a few people and wagons coming in and out. But the Black Gate needs to be able to let armies numbering in the tens of thousands plus all their supplies through at a single time. This puts some constraints on design that would compromise pure defense.   The Towers of the Teeth were later additions with separate purposes. They were more watchtowers and garrison posts. Ideally they would aid in preventing Sauron's minions from returning. In conjunction with the other forts Gondor built at the time, they were meant to also keep Mordor's existing power contained within its borders.

Now, I see no reason at this point to let the Black Gate off the hook. Lets to a redesign here. To fix the flaws, I would basically scrap the movie version entirely. Put the towers on their own hills jutting out like in the book. This would provide better flanking fire and the ability to hit all advancing troops. I would then put an elevated walkway between them on the ridge with ramparts, battlements and machicolations. This walkway is to connect to the gate itself and be the only access point. The height would be the same for the main gate. Then, I would put an earthwork connecting where the walkway lands on the main mountain range and the wall itself.   But, I would put in a barbican style entrance. I would have the walls extend outward from the main wall and put a medium sized tower at the corners and junctions of the walls. A smaller tower should be placed halfway down the walls. The medium towers should have a bastillae placed on the top platform. Both towers should have entrances elevated up a bit so that people have to walk up stairs to get to them, and should only be accessible from the ramparts. The battlements should also be inward facing as well and have machicolations on both sides. Keep in mind the courtyard area is meant to be a kill zone.   The key to this new design is the gatehouses – which should have portcullis and drawbridges at the front. The ceilings need to have murder holes. There should also be a portcullis at the back of the main passageway as well. The drawbridge should have an iron plate covering the entire underside of it. Doors and the portcullis should also made of iron. The room above the pathway where the portcullis are raised into should have sections at the front and back with arrow slits so that the troops here can fire out. I would also put three latticed gates in the passageway.   Incorporated into the gatehouse should be large half towers – one on each side. Half towers are those that have open backs – which allows for those on the walls behind them to fire into them should they be taken. Similarly, the battlements and machicolations also extend along the back side of the wall. This creates a kill zone as enemy troops attempt to leave, just as they tried to enter.   But, the biggest addition that should be made is an extra wall in front. I would have them extend out perpendicular from the point where the ridges that go to the Towers of the Teeth. I would leave a 75 foot opening between them with two smaller towers at the ends.

The original in the book had a single wall blocking the pass between the two mountain ranges. There were three massive arched doors through which the armies could pass. The gate portion of the wall was made of iron. Shooting out along side the main road on either side were two hills connected to the main mountains with ridges. On these hills were rather tall towers called the Towers of the Teeth. Apparently there were caves that are dug into the mountains reaching all the way from the outside of the tower hills to the inside of the gate. I have no information regarding if they connect to each other.   The movie one has the same basic idea of two towers with a wall between them. I have numbers for the movie depiction - 60 feet high, 250 feet long and 90 feet wide. I will assume these are the same for the books due to a lack of better information. I have no idea what the size of the towers are – but from the front they look like about 210 feet high by 60 feet wide. That is a very big guess. But, according to the book positions, these towers are close enough to shoot arrows from one to the other – a major win for the defenses.   There are major differences though that affect the defense. First, the towers are on the main ridges of the mountain range. This gives them significantly less field of fire – including near where the entrances would be. But the biggest is the mind blowingly idiotic means of opening the gate. Each side was put on wheels. Made of stone. Behind the gate were gigantic circular stone ramps with 4 mountain-trolls who were tethered to gigantic beams pushed their way around their rampart's track, gradually opening the gate.   First – the sections of the walls are 675,000 cubic feet. If we assume the Gate is made from granite (the strongest natural stone and it looks like the gate), that means the weight is 113,400,000 pounds per section. One, what is that beam made out of that can handle that kind of stress? Second, this means that each troll much be able to 126,107,082.36 Newtons of force. Yeah, no mail shirt would have been able to stop the troll in Moria during the Fellowship. Frodo should have been killed instantly from that amount of force impacting his chest.   Also, this means there are 8 trolls that are no longer able to fight. Keep in mind that these 8 trolls would account for 1/3 of the entire force of trolls on the battlefield during the engagement in the movies. Then you factor in how long it takes to open the thing up and it only makes sense when huge amounts of troops are being sent out in a planned manner. A rout would have two potential outcomes with this set up. First, Mordor’s army would be trapped outside and killed before the gates could open. Or, the gates could open and mounted troops could charge in hot pursuit fast enough to get in and kill the trolls – locking the Gate open essentially.   Most importantly from a tactical perspective is the fact the trolls are not armored or protected by fortifications. This means a few archers could sneak up and shoot these trolls and block the armies in. That alone would have seriously delayed the attack on Minas Tirith. If this was done during the Battle of the Black Gate, the main exits would be at the far end of Mordor (500 miles away) or Minas Morgul. If you think shooting the trolls like this would be too hard – remember the lack of protection and the movies do not have the caves filled with orcs. Add in the Rangers – forces skilled with bows and trained for stealth. Elves basically have invisibility cloaks and are even better at archery. Legolas was so lightfooted as well that he was able to walk on snow without sinking in enough to even leave a footprint. Stealth should not be an issue for them either.   Neither have machicolations. Seriously – this annoys me. While the towers on either side look like they do, the Black Gate itself does not. The Gate needs these more than any other fort in Lord of the Rings due to the fact there is no possibility to add a moat. On the flip side this means that I will not be complaining about the lack of moat here. No nearby water is available to make one out of. Then, the gate is a single barrier – no layers of defenses. I have no information on the gates in the book other than there are three of them. But it is safe given the patterns so far that they have no layers as well – just heavy doors with no portcullis or second one in the back. The towers have no platforms or anything, meaning an unprotected ground level entrance.   Yeah, while the movie and book both had pretty hard to take defenses (especially with the troops Gondor had), there was plenty of room for improvement. Honestly I would rate it as noticeably better than Helm’s Deep but worse than Minas Tirith. Helm’s Deep had a much weaker gate close to the keep and no redundancy. Minas Tirith has so many layers and the benefit of better terrain. The Black Gate lacks the single point pointlessly vulnerable to attack, but should there be a breach there is little to no backup plan.

Sauron built the gate himself, at least in part relying on the power of the One Ring. In S.A. 3434, the Last Alliance of Men and Elves attacked the Black Gate in a months long and costly battle. The Dead Marshes got its name from the huge number of rotting corpses left behind by this battle. This included two thirds of all the elves from Mirkwood. But they were ultimately successful. After this, The Towers of the Teeth were built and manned by Gondor.   The area was the site of many future battles too. During one of the many Easterling attacks on Gondor, they delivered a serious defeat to Gondor nearby. A later victory in the same general area prevented the invasion from destroying Gondor. In both battles, the fleeing troops from the losing side ran into the Dead Marshes and perished there.   The last battle in the area was actually also the last battle of the War of the Ring. Having won at Minas Tirith, Gondor and Rohan marshaled their forces for their own offensive. They knew that their forces were too limited to actually win a decisive battle, but they did know that the One Ring was on the way to Mt. Doom. They also knew that the only hope for strategic victory would come from success of that mission. Lastly, Faramir had reported Frodo and Sam heading towards the Morgul Vale. So a feint was decided on. While Minas Morgul would have been an easier target, the goal was to keep Sauron's attention as far away from where Frodo was thought to be, Which left the Black Gate as the only other target in reach.   A total of 6,000 men were marched against the Black Gate. A small company did survey and set fire to the Morgul Vale. Another force whose morale was weak was sent to occupy Cair Andros. The rest marched to the Black Gate and took up defensive positions on the slag hills outside. The Mouth of Sauron came out to negotiate, but that did not go well. Then, Mordor's army attacked - surrounding Gondor's army with a force outnumbering it 10 to 1. The Ring Wraiths were attacked by the eagles, preventing their full power from being exploited. The orcs and men apparently were not able to bring their full force to bear either because of the many pools in the area made it hard to traverse. So they provided covering fire as the trolls charged in. The solid defensive position and Gondor's skill at deploying infantry squares meant further advantages to Gondor. But victory was unlikely without intervention from elsewhere.   Victory was gained when the One Ring was finally destroyed. When Frodo put on the One Ring, the Ring Wraiths were sent back to Mt. Doom. Sauron's own attention naturally shifted there too - which resulted in a loss of command and control for the armies fighting at the Black Gate. They began to hesitate and press their attack less fervently. When the One Ring fell into the Cracks of Doom, a catastrophic loss of power occurred. Sauron and the Ring Wraiths were effectively killed. Mt. Doom erupted so violently the Fell Beasts were killed. The Black Gate, Barad-dur and Towers of the Teeth all collapsed. As did the morale of Mordor's army. In the movie, a fissure in the earth opened up and swallowed many troops. At a minimum, a huge number fled, surrendered or even killed themselves. The rest were without direction or were so demoralized their defeat was inevitable. Many Easterlings and Southrons were captured and pardoned by Aragorn.