Isengard

The ring and the vale

Isengard lay in a wide valley at the foot of the last southern peaks of the Misty Mountains, where the river Isen rose and flowed down towards the Fords of Isen and the Gap of Rohan. The valley was called Nan Curunír, the Wizard's Vale, in the years when Saruman held it. Its most striking feature was the great circular wall from which the fortress took its name: a ring of black rock, high and sheer, pierced by a single arched gateway on the southern side. The Sindarin name Angrenost means the Iron Fortress, and the name Isengard is the same idea rendered in the tongue of the Rohirrim.

Inside the wall lay a broad plain, and at its exact centre stood Orthanc, the tower that the Men of Númenor had raised in the days of Gondor's strength. The plain within the ring was, in the fortress's early days, green and planted with orchards and avenues of trees fed by streams from the mountains.

Saruman's transformation

When Saruman turned to his own purposes he remade the enclosed plain into something closer to a mine or a foundry than a garden. The trees were cut down and the ground was honeycombed with shafts, tunnels and pits, roofed over with iron doors, in which forges burned and engines of war were built. Wolves and Orcs were bred and housed in the deeps, and the smoke of the furnaces rose in the vale by night. Within its underground barracks Saruman assembled the army he sent against Rohan: Dunlending hillmen, Orcs of the Misty Mountains, the large Sun-enduring Uruk-hai marked with the White Hand, and the sallow Half-orcs who could pass among Men.

Guarding the entrance were the gate-towers, and along the ring-wall ran stairs and galleries for archers. The ring's strength was such that no army could have taken it by ordinary assault; its weakness lay in the fact that its foundations were not proof against beings who could tear stone with their hands.

After the Ents

After the Ents broke the wall and diverted the Isen into the pits, Isengard became a shallow lake of steaming water, then a marsh, and finally a garden. Treebeard and his people planted trees on the drained land and let the young Huorns of the Watchwood stand guard around the vale. In the Fourth Age King Elessar named it the Treegarth of Orthanc, gave the vale to the Ents, and kept only the tower itself for the Crown.

A fortress of Gondor

Isengard was founded in the early Third Age as the western counterpart of the eastern fortress of Aglarond in the White Mountains; between them the two strongholds guarded the Gap of Rohan, the only easy passage between Eriador and the lands south of the mountains. Both belonged to Gondor, and in the days of the kings Isengard was held by a captain and garrison from Calenardhon. When the population of that province dwindled after the Great Plague, the garrison shrank and the keys of Orthanc were kept by the Stewards in Minas Tirith.

The Dunlending occupation

As Gondor's grip loosened, the hereditary captains of the fortress intermarried with the Dunlendings of the western foothills, and in the reign of King Déor of Rohan, around T.A. 2710, Isengard was in the hands of a population hostile to the Riders. During the Long Winter of 2758 the Dunlendings used it as a base for their invasion of Rohan. When the winter broke, King Fréaláf's people and a force from Gondor drove them out, and the Steward Beren of Gondor, unable to garrison so distant a place, was glad to entrust it to a new keeper.

The keys given to Saruman

In T.A. 2759 Saruman, who had long wandered in the east, returned and offered to hold Isengard for Gondor. Beren gave him the keys of Orthanc, and for nearly two centuries the wizard was a good neighbour to Rohan and a watch on the Gap. Around 2953, after the last meeting of the White Council, he began to claim the fortress as his own, to fortify it and to fill it with his own people. He stopped answering to the Stewards and began sending agents into Dunland and the Shire. He found and used the palantír kept in Orthanc, which brought him under the direct influence of Sauron.

The War of the Ring

In 3018 Saruman imprisoned Gandalf on the pinnacle of Orthanc when the Grey Wizard refused to join him; Gandalf escaped on the eagle Gwaihir in September. From Isengard Saruman sent the Uruk-hai that seized Merry and Pippin at Parth Galen, and in February and March 3019 he launched his full army against Rohan, winning the first and second battles of the Fords of Isen and marching on Helm's Deep.

While that army was away the Ents, roused by the hobbits and by Treebeard's anger at the felling of Fangorn's trees, marched on Isengard on the night of March 2. They tore down the ring-wall, drove the garrison into the tower, and opened the dams so that the Isen poured into Saruman's pits. When Théoden and Gandalf rode into the vale on March 5 they found the fortress a wreck and Saruman shut in Orthanc. Gandalf broke Saruman's staff and cast him from the Order, and Treebeard kept him prisoner until, later that year, he let the wizard go out of pity.

The Fourth Age

After the war Treebeard returned Isengard to the King. Elessar in turn gave the valley to the Ents, keeping Orthanc, and in the tower he found the hidden treasures Saruman had taken, including the Elendilmir that Isildur had worn.

Isengard stood at the head of the vale of the Isen, in the angle where the Misty Mountains ran down to their last ridge and the White Mountains rose across the Gap. The ring-wall enclosed roughly a mile of level ground and abutted the cliffs on the northern side, so that the mountains formed part of its defence. From the southern gate a road ran down the valley to the Fords of Isen, some sixteen miles away, and thence into the Westfold of Rohan. The forest of Fangorn lay a short journey to the east, close enough that Saruman's Orcs could cut its trees for fuel, and the Dunlending hill-country lay to the west.