War of the Dwarves and Orcs

Six years of fighting resulted. As the orcs of the Misty Mountains lived underground, only the dwarves were keen on the fight. Granted, the dwarves were the only group that felt the provocation was enough for a war, but they also were the only ones skilled in the underground fighting needed to obtain victory. So they struggled alone. Both sided showed and asked for no mercy. But the dwarves had the upper hand, slowly and brutally wiping out orc colonies.   Significantly, this demonstrates yet again that the dwarves excel in underground, close quarters combat. The battle of Azanulbizar was the one major battle I am familiar with where they won in open battle, and it was a pyrrhic victory.

They worked their way down from the far north and ended with Moria. The war ended with the Battle of Azanulbizar - outside the gates of Moria.

The Battle of Azanulbizar took place on a cold, dark winter day. As orcs are weakened in the sun, the battlefield conditions gave them the upper hand. It is estimated that between 6-10 thousand dwarves took part in the battle against 15 to 20 thousand orcs.

The Battle of Azanulbizar at first was not going so great for the dwarves. The defensive power of Moria actually worked against them. The orcs had both the high ground and superior numbers - a powerful combination. The battle was finally won when dwarves from the Iron Hills arrived under the command of Dain Ironfoot's father. Dain himself killed Azog and displayed his severed head on a pike. This broke the orc army's cohesion and thus led to a dwarf victory.

This war did have major implications for Middle Earth. First, major deforestation occurred as a result of the pyres for dead dwarves. Deaths in the ranks of the dwarves were almost 50%.

Orc losses were around 10,000 at the Battle of Azanulbizar alone. The roughly 10,000 surviving orcs fled the dwarves and headed towards the White Mountains. They caused major problems for Rohan. A sort of successor war took place as Rohan hunted down these survivors for two generations. This led to the White Mountains being cleared of orcs as well.   Yet, the Misty Mountains were mostly clear of orcs for centuries after. Those orcs left in the Misty Mountains were just beginning to recover from this when even more losses were incurred at the Battle of Five Armies. These two factors would greatly reduce the total numbers of orcs available to Mordor and the possibilities for using Moria and a resurgent Angmar as Mordor bases in the War of the Ring.

The losses of the war were somewhat not worth the cost from a dwarven perspective. Yes, the orcs were beaten back significantly. But Moria was still in enemy hands. Granted, Durin's Bane was well beyond their power to deal with, it still left Moria outside of dwarven control. It would be another 200 years before this would be fixed. Dispite the fact that Mt. Gundabad was cleared of orcs and a dwarven sacred site, it was not exploited as a place for dwarven refugees to colonize. This meant that it too could be resettled by orcs. So while Moria made sense, this was a classic missed opportunity. The dwarves would suffer for it at the Battle of Five Armies. Like the War of the Ring, the losses in the War of Orcs and Dwarves meant the orc numbers at Five Armies were small enough to allow the free people to win there. But the fact that the dwarves did not occupy Mt. Gundabad meant there was an orc army when there shouldn't have been one.   All in all, the War of Dwarves and Orcs was an essential victory for the Free Peoples, extremely costly and a huge missed opportunity at the same time. The Free People had a real shot of victory in the War of the Ring because of the orc losses here. But that war was much harder than it could have been because the dwarves did not go as far as they could.