Battle of the Pelennor Fields

Others have likened the death of the Witch-King of Angmar to the death of Macbeth, who was similarly prophesied not to die by the hand of man "of woman born"; and the crowing of a cockerel at the moment the Witch-King was about to enter the city has been said to recall the cock-crow heralding the resurrection of Jesus at the moment that Simon Peter denied knowing him.

The city of Minas Tirith was besieged following the fall of Osgiliath and the Rammas Echor, Gondor's final barriers against the forces of Mordor.

The Nazgûl or Ringwraiths, Sauron's most feared servants, flew over the battlefield on fell beasts, causing the defenders' morale to waver.

Sauron's forces included Haradrim Southrons who brought elephantine beasts, Easterlings from Rhûn and Variags from Khand, and many Orcs and Trolls.

But before the two could fight, they heard the horns of the Rohirrim, who had arrived at the Rammas Echor, the wall around the Pelennor Fields, newly broken by the invading orcs.

The Rohirrim had bypassed Sauron's lookouts thanks to the Wild Men (the Drúedain), who led them through the hidden Stonewain Valley of their Drúadan Forest.

The hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck, who had accompanied "Dernhelm", stabbed the Witch-king behind the knee with his Barrow-blade, a dagger from the ancient kingdom of Arnor enchanted against the forces of Angmar.

Only the intervention of the hobbit Peregrin Took, Beregond (a Guard of the Citadel) and Gandalf saved Faramir, but Denethor immolated himself before they could stop him.

Though the Rohirrim had inflicted enormous damage on their enemies, Sauron's forces were still numerically superior, and Gothmog, the lieutenant of Minas Morgul, in command after the death of the Witch-king, summoned reserves from nearby Osgiliath.

[T 7] Meanwhile, a fleet of black ships, apparently the navy of the Corsairs of Umbar, Sauron's allies, sailed up Anduin to the Harlond.

The ships indeed were manned by Aragorn and his Rangers, Gimli the Dwarf, Legolas the Elf, the Half-elven brothers Elladan and Elrohir, and fresh troops from southern Gondor.

[T 5] Legolas and Gimli later relate how a ghostly host commanded by Aragorn, the Dead Men of Dunharrow, captured the ships from the Corsairs chiefly through fear.

For example, Théoden dies by a projectile to the heart instead of being crushed by his horse; when Éowyn reveals her sex she has cut her hair short, a detail absent from the final version.

[9] The arrival of Rohan is heralded, the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes, by two calls: a cockerel crowing as the morning comes, and "as if in answer ... great horns of the North wildly blowing".

[10] The cock-crow recalls multiple accounts in Western literature that speak, Shippey writes, of renewed hope and life after death; of the call which told Simon Peter that he had denied Christ three times, and that there would, despite him, be a resurrection; of the cock-crow in Milton's Comus that would "be some solace yet"; of the cockerel in the Norse Ódáinsakr, killed and thrown over a wall by the witch, but crowing to King Hadding a moment later.

[10] As for the horns of Rohan, in Shippey's view "their meaning is bravado and recklessness", and in combination with the cock-crow, the message is that "he who fears for his life shall lose it, but that dying undaunted is no defeat; furthermore that this was true before the Christian myth that came to explain why".

[10] Shippey writes that warhorns exemplify the "heroic Northern world", as in what he calls the nearest Beowulf has to a moment of eucatastrophe, when Ongentheow's Geats, trapped all night, hear the horns of Hygelac's men coming to rescue them.

[11] The style of chivalry, too, the Tolkien scholar Thomas Honegger notes, is consciously of Anglo-Saxon knights (Old English: cniht), not a French-style chevalier.

[12] Shippey writes that prominent at the critical moment of the battle, the decisive charge of the Riders of Rohan, is panache, which he explains means both "the white horsetail on [Eomer's] helm floating in his speed" and "the virtue of sudden onset, the dash that sweeps away resistance".

[13] The Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft notes that the battle is seen some of the time through the eyes of the Hobbit, Pippin, who like "the common soldier in the trenches of World War I"[14] feels his part to be "far from glorious; there is tedious waiting, a sense of uselessness and futility, terror and pain and ugliness".

She cites Hugh Brogan's remark that their determination "master[s] all the grief and horror ... giving it dignity and significance", a therapeutic thought for a man whose mind had been darkened by war.

Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that prophecy in Middle-earth depended on characters' understanding of the Music of the Ainur, the divine plan for Arda, and was often ambiguous.

[T 15][16] Robert Lee Mahon states in CEA Critic that Tolkien's account of the battle is tinged with the elegiac, so that whatever the outcome, much will be lost.

In the battle, Aragorn and Éomer "were unscathed, for such was their fortune and the skill and might of their arms, and few indeed had dared to abide them ... in the hour of their wrath".

"[17] The battle chapter ends with "an elegiac lay", in which Tolkien has a scop of Rohan imitate his beloved Beowulf: "We heard of the horns in the hills ringing, the swords shining in the South-kingdom...

It is all here: the endless, unintelligible movement, the sinister quiet of the front when 'everything is now ready', the flying civilians, the lively, vivid friendships, the background of something like despair and the merry foreground, and such heaven-sent windfalls as a cache of choice tobacco 'salvaged' from a ruin".

[19] As for the siege of Minas Tirith, she writes that Tolkien could have been influenced by what he had seen of the British attack on Thiepval Ridge, with its fiery night-time bombardment, the fortifications across a river, allied aircraft "scouting and strafing" Nazgul-like over the German lines.

[19] David Bell, writing in Mallorn, analyses the battle, concluding that "the Captains of the West were lucky", as Napoleon had reportedly asked that his generals should be.

[12] In the BBC radio series The Lord of the Rings, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is heard from two sides, the first being mainly Pippin's.

[4] Jackson stated that he had taken inspiration from Albrecht Altdorfer's 1529 oil painting, The Battle of Alexander at Issus, depicting the events of 333 BC, with "people holding all of these pikes and spears [against an] incredibly stormy landscape".