Northern courage 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". 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. 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. 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". Shippey notes that this allows Tolkien to display Rohan both as English, based on their
Old English names and words like "
eored" (troop of cavalry), and as "alien, to offer a glimpse of the way land shapes people". 's 1529 oil painting
The Battle of Alexander at Issus inspired
Peter Jackson's film depiction.
Elegiac tone 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. Men have the gift of Iluvatar, death. 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". So far so heroic, in the fantasy, Mahon notes; "But many others were hurt or maimed or dead upon the field." James Shelton, in
Journal of Tolkien Research, writes that Éomer's (and Tolkien's) use of
alliterative verse during the battle functions on different levels. After Théoden's death, Éomer declaims "Mourn not overmuch! Mighty was the fallen, meet was his ending. When his mound is raised, women then shall weep. War now calls us!"
Military realism Nancy Martsch, in
Mythlore, writes that Tolkien's descriptions of battle are vivid, noting that he served in the
Battle of the Somme in 1916. She quotes another war veteran,
C. S. Lewis's comment: "[Tolkien's] war has the very quality of the war my generation knew. 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". ; the bend would be placed at the knight's elbow 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. He notes that if Aragorn had been late, the battle would have been lost. All the same, Men were, he writes, usually bigger and stronger than Orcs; they were arguably better armed and armoured; and they were motivated by leadership, where the Orcs were "driven to battle"; with the loss of the Witch-king of Angmar, the Orcs were leaderless and demoralised. On the matter of armour, Honegger considers Tolkien's mention of prince Imrahil's shining
vambrace. He writes that it was a piece of plate armour, hinting at a late medieval pattern; but given Tolkien's likening of Rohan's army to those of the
Bayeux tapestry, and his explicit mentions of
mail shirts, the armour in the battle must mainly have been the earlier
Beowulf-style mail, with additional plate. == Adaptations ==