Gothmog

The Lord of Balrogs

Gothmog was a Maia of fire whom Melkor corrupted in the earliest days of the World and made chief of the Balrogs, the demons of fire and shadow who were the most terrible of his servants. In Angband he held the rank of high-captain, commanding the hosts of Morgoth when they went to war, and no other captain of the Enemy is named so often in the histories of Beleriand. He fought with a great black axe and with a whip of flame, and he was carried into battle by the terror that went before all his kind. A different Gothmog, a lieutenant of Minas Morgul in the Third Age, is a separate and lesser figure who merely bore the same name.

The death of Fëanor

When the Balrogs rescued Melkor from Ungoliant in Lammoth, Gothmog would have been among them. His first great deed against the Elves came at the very beginning of the First Age. Fëanor, fresh from the Dagor-nuin-Giliath and burning to reach Morgoth, outran his own host and was surrounded by Balrogs at the borders of Dor Daedeloth. He fought them long alone, but Gothmog struck him down with mortal wounds, and though his sons drove the Balrogs off, Fëanor died in sight of Thangorodrim.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

Gothmog's greatest victory came in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears in F.A. 472. When the Union of Maedhros had been broken by the treachery of Uldor and the Easterlings, and the host of Fingon was surrounded on the plain of Anfauglith, Morgoth sent out Gothmog with the Balrogs, the dragons and the last of his reserves. Gothmog cut through the Elvish lines, sundered the host of Fingon from that of Turgon, and came to the High King himself. Fingon fought him until another Balrog caught the king with its whip, and Gothmog then hewed him down with his axe and beat his body into the earth. The banner of the House of Fingolfin was trampled and the North was lost.

In the same battle it was Gothmog's troops who took Húrin alive after the last stand of the Men of Dor-lómin, when Húrin's axe had slain seventy of the trolls of his guard. Húrin was brought to Angband, and the long torment of his house began.

The Fall of Gondolin

In F.A. 510 Morgoth's host came over the mountains against Gondolin, and Gothmog led it, with Balrogs, dragons and Orcs beyond counting. The city's defenders fought house by house. In the great square of the King, Gothmog met Ecthelion, lord of the House of the Fountain, and the two fought at the edge of the king's fountain. Ecthelion, though wounded, drove the spike of his helm into the Balrog and dragged him into the water, and both were drowned or quenched together. The death of their captain did not save Gondolin, but it is counted among the great deeds of the Elder Days, and Ecthelion's name was remembered in Gondor into the Third Age.

Legacy

Gothmog is the measure of what a Balrog was: a captain able to slay a High King of the Noldor and the greatest of Elven warriors. His death, and the deaths of most of his kind in the War of Wrath, left only a few survivors hidden in the roots of the mountains, of whom Durin's Bane is the one that later history records.

Slain by Ecthelion of the Fountain in the square of the King during the Fall of Gondolin; the two went down into the fountain together.