SO first off I admittedly was rambling fast so I collapsed an issue of de jure vs de facto in framing the matter; we're also deep in the weeds of the Appendices and details Pippin witnesses but utterly fails to understand.
I have very little doubt that Denethor rules Minas Tirith and Anórien (the region/province that is to Minas Anor [aka Minas Tirith] as Ithilien was to Minas Ithil) extremely autocratically; he may even be making overall decisions that way, and Dol Amroth in particular given Imrahil's specific choices and loyalties (Denethor was his brother-in-law) may hew extremely close to that.
But bluntly by the list of the arriving reinforcements, plus the sheer number of people (and supplies) Aragorn is able to gather up from various places after dealing with the Corsairs/the threat of the Corsairs, outside of Anórien and Dol Amroth, lotta people who are technically enfeoffed to Minas Tirith ain't showing up.
The Lord of Lossarnach brings about two hundred fighters, rather than two thousand, because while he's willing to show up he's Noped out of taking more than two hundred fighters away from the defense of, well, Lossarnach, his actual province. The Lord of Ringló Vale sends three hundred under one of his sons; Morthond at least shows up in person with both his sons, but he's only got a few hundred people; ditto Pennith Galen. The coastal province of Ethir sends "some hundred or more [men], spared from the ships"; Lamedon sends "a few grim hillmen without a captain". Anfalas has a couple hundred, almost none of them with any equipment except "the household" of the lord.
Conversely, after scouring the Pelargirs, Aragorn is able to bring up over four thousand from the provinces he passed through, and that's only a couple of them.
The state of the stores in Minas Tirith pretty solidly indicate that the various provinces have been equally conservative in what supplies they've been sending, at least for the last while.
The fact that they're ABLE to do so indicates at least a generation where Minas Tirith is not commanding a centralized, professional army of any capacity - even by the collapse of the Empire, Roman emperors and pretenders and generals WERE able to command the vast majority of legions to pick up and abandon their long-term stations, because of the systemic and continued centralized discipline. Denethor is not running that kind of political enterprise.
You're totally right: monarchs (and Denethor is absolutely acting as one, regardless of his specific title) throughout history have used The Threat of War to increase their power. And six hundred years ago his great-great grandfather might've done the same. Denethor can't: he's logistically fucked.
The monarchs of your period were able to do that because of the way that warfare worked, and also because of the politics of the era, which were very much those of each state against ALL the other states, and was a warfare of - increasingly - either professional national standing armies, or (at the beginning of it) extremely professional mercenaries.
That meant if Count Such and Such said "actually, your majesty, go fuck yourself", King So and So could (and usually would) be able to take direct military action against them - and indeed had frequently spent the early 16th and late 15th centuries doing exactly that, and teaching the nobility to Not.
That is in no way shape or form the situation that Denethor is in. Denethor is in a flat zero sum conflict against an enemy who wants to (and will) absolutely obliterate him and his entire realm off the face of the planet and who has very explicitly been fighting a war of attrition with Gondor on exactly those terms since before the death of the last king of Anárion's line - and is winning that war at this point.
If Angbor of Lamedon decides - as he did, in fact - to go "fuck it, me and my army are staying here because bluntly I care way less if Denethor and Minas Tirith fall and die than about the threat to my actual province" and as a result only a handful of presumably the most overall-patriotic-yay-Gondor bother going north to the muster, Denethor can . . . do exactly bupkiss. If Angbor is sending less grain because he's making sure the stockpiles for Lamedon come first, Denethor can also do exactly bupkiss.
Because Denethor has no military capacity to enforce anything and hasn't for at least as long as Boromir's been an adult and probably longer ("those who shelter behind give much praise, but little help"); even Ecthelion, his father, is desperate enough that "Thorongil" can wander into the city without family or history and out of pure personal capacity become a major military commander who can go "I'm taking a fleet to go smash Umbar" and . . . do that.
No, the councils involved did not have de jure power, and theoretically Denethor controls the whole realm, by law and by structure; de facto, the reason Denethor listens to what the Lords of the Fiefs have to say is because if they start flipping him off he can't do shit, because he has no way to make them do fuck all: he cannot divert military forces from dealing with Sauron and trying will just mean Gondor is Over. He has no legal requirement to allow them a vote or anything, but he has a pragmatic and logistical absolute need to keep them on-side; if they aren't on-side, Gondor is Over, and relying on the cultural investment in the Idea of Gondor without any military backup to deal with breakaway regions means that you really can't put too much pressure on it without it shattering.
Similarly Denethor does not have the logistical ability to have a heavily centralized administration: the roads aren't good enough, there aren't enough people to man road-guard stations, or to be part of a centralized administrative network. We see that as we follow Gandalf and Pippin riding to Minas Tirith from Rohan. The provincial fiefdoms HAVE to be doing most of that; and as a result, again, all that Denethor has to rely on to make sure they're playing ball at ALL is going to be this idea of Gondor as a united Realm.
As it happens, the Númenórean-accultured-Idea of Gondor was really strong, and really powerful, and was actually enough to keep eg Lamedon and Lossarnach and the other provinces and crucially Dol Amroth at least willing to still participate, so that it seemed more valuable to them at all times to remain "Lord of Lossarnach, Province of Gondor" than it would to just say fuckit and become King of Lossarnach; and culture can in fact have that kind of power, and the IDEA of a Great Realm can have it as well.
But whether Denethor likes it or not (and I'd be willing to bet hard cash he doesn't), de facto, he has to work within a framework where whether or not the Lords of the Fiefs WANT to be part of Gondor is in fact the most important thing because he can't do shit if they decide they don't.
QED Angbor of Lamedon keeping four thousand armed men back because making sure Lamedon wasn't fucked up by the Corsairs was more important to him than making sure Minas Tirith (and thus, you know . . . Gondor . . . ) didn't fall.
And crucially: what's relayed to us by Pippin's POV summary of what he hears in the crowds watching? That was expected. "Ah. Nobody's sending even half their forces, because of the news of that fleet." They take that for granted.
Now to be clear: at multiple points in European history, monarchs with a much more hardcore centralized control over their nobility absolutely did strip areas of their military forces in order to win in the "core" of the kingdom, allowing outer regions to be BADLY raided and destroyed, dealing with the rebuilding and/or running the other raiding forces out AFTER they'd maintained their central hold and control. That absolutely happened.
When they couldn't do that, it was usually a sign that dynasty was on the way out; the ones that had that point of weakness and DIDN'T end up getting punted were usually smart enough not to ASK their vassals to be cool with their own lands being burned while Paris or Rome was saved, but solved the problem some other way, and then . . . worked on increasing their centralized control later.
So when I say I'm pretty sure that's what he's working with by the War of the Ring, what Gondor is dealing with by his era in general, I mean in the de facto world of logistics as evidenced by his actual ability to command forces and supplies - not the de jure world of "they have formal voting rights within a delineated official structure"; I'm looking at things with an interest of "how is the power on the ground actually shaking out", not "what does the cultural rule-book say".
Now on the upside the fact that it DIDN'T occur to anyone to radically change the cultural rulebook means that it's gonna be WAY easier for Aragorn to return a truly centralized function to the area! But.
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Re: reposting to avoid Rogue Strikeout!
Date: 2022-06-18 11:56 pm (UTC)I have very little doubt that Denethor rules Minas Tirith and Anórien (the region/province that is to Minas Anor [aka Minas Tirith] as Ithilien was to Minas Ithil) extremely autocratically; he may even be making overall decisions that way, and Dol Amroth in particular given Imrahil's specific choices and loyalties (Denethor was his brother-in-law) may hew extremely close to that.
But bluntly by the list of the arriving reinforcements, plus the sheer number of people (and supplies) Aragorn is able to gather up from various places after dealing with the Corsairs/the threat of the Corsairs, outside of Anórien and Dol Amroth, lotta people who are technically enfeoffed to Minas Tirith ain't showing up.
The Lord of Lossarnach brings about two hundred fighters, rather than two thousand, because while he's willing to show up he's Noped out of taking more than two hundred fighters away from the defense of, well, Lossarnach, his actual province. The Lord of Ringló Vale sends three hundred under one of his sons; Morthond at least shows up in person with both his sons, but he's only got a few hundred people; ditto Pennith Galen. The coastal province of Ethir sends "some hundred or more [men], spared from the ships"; Lamedon sends "a few grim hillmen without a captain". Anfalas has a couple hundred, almost none of them with any equipment except "the household" of the lord.
Conversely, after scouring the Pelargirs, Aragorn is able to bring up over four thousand from the provinces he passed through, and that's only a couple of them.
The state of the stores in Minas Tirith pretty solidly indicate that the various provinces have been equally conservative in what supplies they've been sending, at least for the last while.
The fact that they're ABLE to do so indicates at least a generation where Minas Tirith is not commanding a centralized, professional army of any capacity - even by the collapse of the Empire, Roman emperors and pretenders and generals WERE able to command the vast majority of legions to pick up and abandon their long-term stations, because of the systemic and continued centralized discipline. Denethor is not running that kind of political enterprise.
You're totally right: monarchs (and Denethor is absolutely acting as one, regardless of his specific title) throughout history have used The Threat of War to increase their power. And six hundred years ago his great-great grandfather might've done the same. Denethor can't: he's logistically fucked.
The monarchs of your period were able to do that because of the way that warfare worked, and also because of the politics of the era, which were very much those of each state against ALL the other states, and was a warfare of - increasingly - either professional national standing armies, or (at the beginning of it) extremely professional mercenaries.
That meant if Count Such and Such said "actually, your majesty, go fuck yourself", King So and So could (and usually would) be able to take direct military action against them - and indeed had frequently spent the early 16th and late 15th centuries doing exactly that, and teaching the nobility to Not.
That is in no way shape or form the situation that Denethor is in. Denethor is in a flat zero sum conflict against an enemy who wants to (and will) absolutely obliterate him and his entire realm off the face of the planet and who has very explicitly been fighting a war of attrition with Gondor on exactly those terms since before the death of the last king of Anárion's line - and is winning that war at this point.
If Angbor of Lamedon decides - as he did, in fact - to go "fuck it, me and my army are staying here because bluntly I care way less if Denethor and Minas Tirith fall and die than about the threat to my actual province" and as a result only a handful of presumably the most overall-patriotic-yay-Gondor bother going north to the muster, Denethor can . . . do exactly bupkiss. If Angbor is sending less grain because he's making sure the stockpiles for Lamedon come first, Denethor can also do exactly bupkiss.
Because Denethor has no military capacity to enforce anything and hasn't for at least as long as Boromir's been an adult and probably longer ("those who shelter behind give much praise, but little help"); even Ecthelion, his father, is desperate enough that "Thorongil" can wander into the city without family or history and out of pure personal capacity become a major military commander who can go "I'm taking a fleet to go smash Umbar" and . . . do that.
No, the councils involved did not have de jure power, and theoretically Denethor controls the whole realm, by law and by structure; de facto, the reason Denethor listens to what the Lords of the Fiefs have to say is because if they start flipping him off he can't do shit, because he has no way to make them do fuck all: he cannot divert military forces from dealing with Sauron and trying will just mean Gondor is Over. He has no legal requirement to allow them a vote or anything, but he has a pragmatic and logistical absolute need to keep them on-side; if they aren't on-side, Gondor is Over, and relying on the cultural investment in the Idea of Gondor without any military backup to deal with breakaway regions means that you really can't put too much pressure on it without it shattering.
Similarly Denethor does not have the logistical ability to have a heavily centralized administration: the roads aren't good enough, there aren't enough people to man road-guard stations, or to be part of a centralized administrative network. We see that as we follow Gandalf and Pippin riding to Minas Tirith from Rohan. The provincial fiefdoms HAVE to be doing most of that; and as a result, again, all that Denethor has to rely on to make sure they're playing ball at ALL is going to be this idea of Gondor as a united Realm.
As it happens, the Númenórean-accultured-Idea of Gondor was really strong, and really powerful, and was actually enough to keep eg Lamedon and Lossarnach and the other provinces and crucially Dol Amroth at least willing to still participate, so that it seemed more valuable to them at all times to remain "Lord of Lossarnach, Province of Gondor" than it would to just say fuckit and become King of Lossarnach; and culture can in fact have that kind of power, and the IDEA of a Great Realm can have it as well.
But whether Denethor likes it or not (and I'd be willing to bet hard cash he doesn't), de facto, he has to work within a framework where whether or not the Lords of the Fiefs WANT to be part of Gondor is in fact the most important thing because he can't do shit if they decide they don't.
QED Angbor of Lamedon keeping four thousand armed men back because making sure Lamedon wasn't fucked up by the Corsairs was more important to him than making sure Minas Tirith (and thus, you know . . . Gondor . . . ) didn't fall.
And crucially: what's relayed to us by Pippin's POV summary of what he hears in the crowds watching? That was expected. "Ah. Nobody's sending even half their forces, because of the news of that fleet." They take that for granted.
Now to be clear: at multiple points in European history, monarchs with a much more hardcore centralized control over their nobility absolutely did strip areas of their military forces in order to win in the "core" of the kingdom, allowing outer regions to be BADLY raided and destroyed, dealing with the rebuilding and/or running the other raiding forces out AFTER they'd maintained their central hold and control. That absolutely happened.
When they couldn't do that, it was usually a sign that dynasty was on the way out; the ones that had that point of weakness and DIDN'T end up getting punted were usually smart enough not to ASK their vassals to be cool with their own lands being burned while Paris or Rome was saved, but solved the problem some other way, and then . . . worked on increasing their centralized control later.
So when I say I'm pretty sure that's what he's working with by the War of the Ring, what Gondor is dealing with by his era in general, I mean in the de facto world of logistics as evidenced by his actual ability to command forces and supplies - not the de jure world of "they have formal voting rights within a delineated official structure"; I'm looking at things with an interest of "how is the power on the ground actually shaking out", not "what does the cultural rule-book say".
Now on the upside the fact that it DIDN'T occur to anyone to radically change the cultural rulebook means that it's gonna be WAY easier for Aragorn to return a truly centralized function to the area! But.