I’m trying to work as inefficiently as possible today, on the hypothesis that every hour spent at work is an hour spent away from home. That, along with the fact that I just bought a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of The Hobbit for my stepdaughter, has inspired this thread.
As all Tolkien geeks know, Gandalf’s motives in the quest for Erebor were not simply concern for Thorin et al. Gandalf helped the landless King assemble his company not because he especially cared about recovering the hoard, but because he hoped the quest might result in the death of Smaug and prevent Sauron from using the dragon during the coming war with Mordor. This is, of course, what happened. (I suspect the Lakelanders might have been a mite pissed by the mechanism.) As a a bonus, the Orcs of the Misty Mountains took enough of a pounding during the Battle of the Five Armies that the there was peace for many a year in those lands.
In one history, anyway. But what if things had gone a trifle differently? What if the Dwarves had not survived the passage thru Mirkwood?
It’s not hard to imagine that happening. The episode with the spiders was a near thing, no?. Had Bilbo arrived a little later, he might have had nothing to to rescue but corpses; and had he arrived EARLIER, and the Dwarves been in better condition when they enoucntered the Elves, they might have to make a fight of it and gotten massacred.
Anyway, the specifics don’t matter overmuch. Let’s say that either all the Dwarves die in Mirkwood, or that Thorin and enough of the others perish that the quest is abandoned. Bilbo might then take refuge with Beorn for the nonce, and when the White Council finish with a certain necromancer, the Grey Wizard would surely have tracked them down and helped Bilbo, at least, get home safely. In this scenario, Bilbo still has the ring–but Smaug and the Orcs are still in place.
What does Gandalf do? Wait twenty years and try to persuade Aragorn to take a crack at it? See if the good things he’s heard about that Bard fellow have any basis in fact? Take a crack at manipulating Dain?
I’m not convinced even Aragorn could have done anything much against an old (and therefore extremely powerful) dragon. Even Dale was only able to bring Smaug down because a literal little bird whispered in his ear the tidbit that Bilbo had learned while spying on and taunting the dragon in his lair, and who else except a hobbit with a magic ring that made him invisible could have been quiet and, well, invisible enough to have gotten close to Smaug in the first place?
If Smaug had been alive at the time of the War of the Ring, I predict that he would have devastated the good guys enough that, even if Frodo and Sam (and Gollum) were able to do their thing, there wouldn’t have been much left to rebuild in the end. The forces at Helm’s Deep? Smooshed and blasted before Gandalf and Eomer’s Riders could have arrived. Minas Tirith? Pretty white rubble.
In fact, Frodo’s chances become almost nonexistant once he hits Mordor if there aren’t enough of the forces of light remaining to stage a credible threat at the Black Gates, thus allowing the two hobbits to slip through all the way to Mount Doom.
Pretty lucky everything happened the way it did, I should say.
Yup. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Lorien, night in Rivendell. It’s hard to see a Plan B if Thorin’s quest failed; it took nearly as much of a deus ex machina to bring Smaug down as it would to destroy the Ring, and even if by some miracle that can be managed, there’s still no Battle of Five Armies to whittle down the Orcs.
Which is why Gandalf hints to Bilbo that it was all the inscrutable workings of Providence.
That’s the more charitable reading of the events in question.
A less charitable reading is that Gandalf sent Thorn et al to the Lonely Mountain knowing they would likely stir up the dragon and had some other notion of a way to bring down the dragon. Obviously that proved unnecessary, but only because of Bard’s Black Arrow and a certain mouthy thrush. The Lakelanders still suffered, though, even if it was for the greater (and long-range) good.
Although the case can be made that Lake-town was sitting on top of a sleeping volcano. Smaug was eventually going to trash the place – the only question was when. Gandalf worked to make sure that the attack, when it did come, resolved itself as best it could.
Really? I ask from true ignorance - my memory from reading The Hobbit many (many) years ago is that Smaug was pretty content to lie there on his hoard and guard it - wasn’t he afraid someone would steal some of it if he left it alone?
So what would have caused him to stir?
And what would Sauron have used to motivate him to fight on his side? Are dragons always ineluctably evil, with no other ends of their own?
Roddy
While it was certainly reasonable for Gandalf to worry about a Smaug/Sauron alliance, just because of the potential consequences, I don’t think that implies that such an alliance was inevitable. Remember, dragons are arrogant SOBs. Smaug might have been willing to acknowledge Sauron as a peer or at least close to it, but as a master? He’d have to prove that first, and it would take a damned lot of proving. Yeah, Morgoth was able to make good use of dragons in his own wars, but even there, that was largely a matter of pointing them in the right direction and letting them do what they wanted anyway. And Sauron was no Morgoth, and Smaug was already perfectly comfortable on his hoard of treasure. What’s in it for him, to attack Lorien?
As to the second question, I expect Sauron would have offered him gold, jewels, and tasty Children of Iluvatur, both natural and adoptive.
To the first, though I tend to agree with The Hampster King, you do have a point. The best response I can come up with is that, while Smaug seemed to have lain idle for a long time from a Mannish, Hobbitish, or even Dwarvish point of view, he had not been idle long at all from his POV, or from Gandalf’s. I also expect that, like a lesser lizard, he was capable of going without food for a long time, but eventually he was going to get hungry, not to mention bored.
As I think on it, THK is right. Laketown was a sitting on a volcano no less than if it had been established atop Mount Doom. It was just in prettier country.
I doubt Sauron would have broached the subject of an alliance by calling himself Smaug’s master. He would have flattered the dragon and promised him treasure to hoard and maidens to barbecue, while all the way making contingency plans to take care of him if necessary–and, in fact, even if NOT necessary–after the end of the war. And the Wyrm Formerly Known as Pryftan would have been making similar plans.
Anyway I have consulted Howard’s chronicles, and it seems clear that the Third Age was long after the Hyborean. Conan was in fact one of Eldar–a lost son of Finwe. I’ll give you the details as soon as I make up a good lie.
I know more of Robert E. Howard than Skald has forgotten about JRR Tolkein.
No, wait… I have forgotten more about JRR Tolkein than Skald has forgotten about Robert E. Howard.
No.
Can I get back to you on this?
Aren’t palantirs “shiny”? Wouldn’t a dragon want one in the hoard on general principle? If so, couldn’t Sauron have contrived to make sure that one would have come within the notice of Smaug? And then with Smaug having added it to the hoard, and dragons being very susceptible to flattery, wouldn’t Sauron have found it much easier to control Smaug than say, Saruman?
Looking at it from the side of the good guys, I don’t know if Smaug would have given Gandalf a tougher time than the Balrog did. I mean if one arrow to the tits is good enough to take down a red dragon, I gotta’ think Gandalf would’ve had a much easier time.
But it certainly makes a better tale, the way it turned out.
But then if there’s no Battle of Five Armies, there would have been a lot more Dwarves and Lakelanders unwhittled, too (including Thorin, no doubt worth more than a few orcs in battle).
An offshoot question-suppose Mister Baggins is killed by Smaug, who then has the One Ring. Would he notice its unique nature? Be tempted? Or just consider it part of his hoard until the Nazgul come looking for it (and possibly get roasted-Smaug is Not A Man either, after all).
