Lake-town

The town on the water

Esgaroth stands on the Long Lake, a broad sheet of water south of the Lonely Mountain fed by the Forest River from the west and the River Running from the north, and drained by the same River Running over falls at its southern end. The town is built entirely out in the lake, on a forest of great piles driven into the bed some way from the western shore and joined to the land by a long wooden bridge. Its houses, halls and quays rise from platforms above the water, boats move through its streets, and its market is a pool in the middle of the town where craft can tie up and trade. The Lake-men built it there for safety: in the water no dragon could come at them by land, and no enemy could reach the bridge unseen.

An older Esgaroth once stood on the shore, and its rotting piles could still be seen in the shallows at low water. The present town was younger but much reduced from the days when Dale flourished and the Dwarves of Erebor sent their goods down the river. Its people were Northmen, kin to the Men of Dale, and lived by boats and trade. Barrels of wine came from Dorwinion up the River Running and went on up the Forest River to the halls of Thranduil, and the empty barrels floated back. Lake-town was governed not by a king but by a Master, chosen by the old and wise of the town, a merchant office more concerned with tolls and trade than with old songs.

The company's welcome

When Smaug destroyed Dale in T.A. 2770 the Lake-men survived because of the water, but the trade that had made them rich died with the Mountain. For nearly two centuries the town lived on memories and on the songs that promised the return of the King under the Mountain. In the autumn of 2941 those songs seemed to come true when Thorin Oakenshield, his twelve companions and Bilbo floated into the town in the Elvenking's barrels. The Master of Lake-town housed and feasted them, more from policy than belief, and sent them up the lake to the Mountain with boats and provisions. One captain of the guard, Bard, grim-faced and descended from Girion of Dale, warned that they were waking a dragon.

The burning of Lake-town

Bard was right. Smaug, roused from the Mountain and unable to find the Dwarves, came down on the town at night. The bridge was cut and the archers stood on the roofs, but arrows glanced from the dragon's armour, and Esgaroth caught fire from end to end. Bard alone held his post. Warned by the thrush of the bare patch in Smaug's breast that Bilbo had found, he shot the black arrow of his house into it, and the dragon fell on the burning town and destroyed it utterly. Bard swam ashore to find the Master fled and the people crying for him as king.

Rebuilding

Bard declined to displace the Master and instead led the Lake-men and the Elvenking's army to the Mountain to claim a share of Smaug's hoard, and fought at the Battle of Five Armies. From Dáin's settlement he received a fourteenth of the treasure, of which he gave a great part to the Master for the rebuilding of Esgaroth. The Master, however, took the gold and fled into the wild, where he died, and a new Master was chosen. A new Lake-town rose farther north on the shore, larger and richer than the old, and the lake was again busy with boats. Bard himself refounded Dale, and the two towns prospered together into the War of the Ring, when the Easterlings' invasion of the North in March 3019 threatened the lake until it was thrown back from Dale.

On the western side of the Long Lake, south of Erebor and Dale, east of Mirkwood, where the Forest River enters the lake and the River Running leaves it southward toward the Sea of Rhûn.