Easterlings

The name

Easterlings is not the name of a single people but a label used by those in the West for Men who came from the east, beyond the reach of the Elves and the Edain. In the First Age it meant the Swarthy Men who followed the Edain into Beleriand a century and a half after them. In the Third Age it meant the nations of Rhûn, the lands about the Sea of Rhûn and beyond, whom Gondor fought again and again and who came to the Pelennor Fields in the army of Mordor. These peoples were many and various, and the histories of the West seldom trouble to distinguish them.

The First Age: Bór and Ulfang

After the Dagor Bragollach, when Morgoth's servants roamed freely in eastern Beleriand, new companies of Men came over the Blue Mountains. They were short and broad, with dark hair and skin and dark eyes, and the Elves called them Swarthy Men. Some were already secretly in Morgoth's service. Maedhros, needing every ally, made treaties with two of their chieftains. Bór and his sons Borlad, Borlach and Borthand followed Maedhros and Maglor and remained faithful. Ulfang the Black and his sons Ulfast, Ulwarth and Uldor followed Caranthir and were traitors.

At the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in F.A. 472, the sons of Ulfang first delayed Maedhros's advance with false reports and then, at the height of the battle, turned on his host from behind while more Easterlings came down from the hills to join them. Uldor was slain by Maglor, and Ulfast and Ulwarth were slain by the sons of Bór, who themselves died fighting. The treachery destroyed the eastern army, and the Elves never afterward trusted Easterlings.

Morgoth paid his servants with the land of Hithlum, forbidding them to leave it. There the Easterlings became the masters of the surviving House of Hador, whom they enslaved. Brodda, who took Aerin of Húrin's kin as his wife, and Lorgan, who held Tuor as a thrall, were lords among them. Túrin slew Brodda in F.A. 495. When Beleriand sank at the end of the age, the Easterlings of Hithlum perished or fled east with the rest.

The Second Age

Through the Second Age the peoples of the east lived under the growing shadow of Sauron. The Silmarillion says that he made himself a king and god over the Men of the east and south, and the Númenóreans, when they came to the coasts of Middle-earth, found the inland peoples already fallen under him. The two Blue Wizards were sent into the east in the Third Age, but no account of their work survives. When Sauron marched against the Last Alliance, Easterlings fought in his host.

The Third Age: Gondor's eastern wars

Easterlings were the enemies of Gondor from its early years. In T.A. 490 they first attacked, and in 541 King Rómendacil I fell in battle against them, though his son Turambar avenged him and pushed Gondor's borders east. Rómendacil II defeated them again in 1248, and for a time Gondor held the lands about the Sea of Rhûn in check with the help of the Northmen of Rhovanion.

The Wainriders were the most dangerous of the eastern peoples. A confederation who travelled in great wagons and fought from chariots, they overran Rhovanion in 1851 and slew King Narmacil II in 1856. Calimehtar defeated them on Dagorlad in 1899, but in 1944 they returned in alliance with the Haradrim and the Variags of Khand. King Ondoher and both his sons died in the north, but the Wainriders, celebrating too soon, were surprised in their camp by Eärnil of the southern army and driven into the Dead Marshes. The Battle of the Camp ended their power.

The Balchoth came next, a people related to the Wainriders who crossed the Anduin in 2510 and cut off Gondor's northern army. It was then that Eorl and the Éothéod rode down from the north to the Field of Celebrant, destroyed the Balchoth, and won Calenardhon for their people; the Rohirrim were born of that victory.

The War of the Ring

In the last years of the Third Age, Easterlings came in great numbers to the service of Sauron. They gathered at the Black Gate, joined the attack on Dale and Erebor in the north, and stood in the army that assailed Minas Tirith. On the Pelennor Fields Easterlings with axes and the Variags of Khand fought against the Rohirrim and the men of Gondor, and at the Morannon the bulk of Sauron's army was drawn from the east. When the Ring was destroyed, some fled and some, the proudest, fought on until they were slain.

Fate

King Elessar made peace with the peoples of the east, pardoning those who surrendered and setting the boundaries of Gondor anew. In the Fourth Age the Easterlings remained beyond the Sea of Rhûn as peoples in their own right, and the king and Éomer of Rohan campaigned there in later years, but the histories of the West record little more of them.

The Easterlings of the First Age were short and broad, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with sallow or swarthy skin, unlike any of the three houses of the Edain. The Easterlings of the Third Age are described in the same terms: swarthy, bearded, often with slanted eyes, and armoured in strange fashions. The Wainriders were tall and fought from chariots and wagons, and the Variags of Khand are named as a separate people again. The Men of the far east appear at the Pelennor as bearded axemen.

The Easterlings were tribal peoples under chieftains and, in later ages, kings, and the details of their customs are almost entirely lost. The Wainriders lived in wagons and moved as whole nations, fighting from chariots; the Balchoth are described as numerous, poorly armed and dwelling in the east under the sway of Dol Guldur. Most Easterlings of the Third Age worshipped Sauron or served him as tributaries, though the Bór of the First Age showed that not all who came from the east were his servants.

Easterlings descended from those Men of Hildórien who did not join the westward march of the Edain, or who stayed in the lands east of the mountains under the shadow of Morgoth and later of Sauron. Those who came west in the First Age did so after the Bragollach, some already in Morgoth's service. The Silmarillion says that the Men who never crossed the Blue Mountains were the ancestors of the many peoples the Elves later met, and the Easterlings of the Third Age counted among their number nations wholly unknown to the West.

The Easterling armies were broken at the Pelennor and the Morannon, and their peoples made peace with King Elessar. They endured in the east through the Fourth Age.