Without any doubt, the Battle of Dagorlad was one of the most important battles that took place during the Second Age.
Its outcome marked the turning point in the War of the Last Alliance and opened the door to Sauron’s defeat.
At the same time, it was the seed that, millennia later, would germinate in the story of The Lord of the Rings.
What is Dagorlad?
This name was given to a vast plain north of the Black Gate of Mordor. It was desert land without any vegetation.
This absence of life was caused by all the volcanic sediments from the explosions of the Orodruin volcano.
Before Sauron arrived in Mordor, Dagorlad was a place with a lot of vegetation, probably because of the humidity from the Rhûn Sea.
Background to the battle
The Battle of Dagorlad was the initial act of a war of the Last Alliance, the final consequence of events that had taken place throughout the Second Age and that would culminate, in a first act, at the entrance to Mordor.
After destroying the kingdom of Eregion and trying to recover the Rings of Power, Sauron was defeated by the troops of Númenor, who came to the aid of the elves. In flight and hiding in the far east, the Dark Lord regained his strength and plotted revenge against the Númenoréans.
Thanks to his arts of seduction, he persuaded the royalty of Númenor and led them to their misfortune: Eru-Ilúvatar destroyed the island and most of the Númenoréans in 3319 S.E.
However, some of the population was saved and returned to Middle-earth, and those survivors founded Gondor and Arnor. Sauron saw with resentment that his vengeance was not yet complete.
Years after the fall of Númenor, the Dark Lord returned to Mordor and gathered an imposing army with the firm intention of conquering Middle-earth, sweeping Elves and Men in his path.
Gondor was the first kingdom to be attacked, as it bordered the lands of Mordor. The Gondorian king, Anárion, resisted the thrust of the enemy army while his brother Isildur fled north to Arnor and met his father, Elendil.
Thus began the war known as the Last Alliance, a conflict that would last no less than 11 long years.
For a few years, during which Gondor served as a check on Sauron’s aspirations, a formidable army was assembled from the three great races that inhabited Middle-earth at that time:
The Noldor Elves, Sindar and Silvans of Lothlórien and the Black Forest. They were commanded by Elrond of Rivendel, Gil-Galad, king of the Noldor, Círdan, King Oropher (Legolas’ grandfather) of the Black Forest, and King Amdír of Lórien.
On the part of the Men, most of them were descendants of Númenor (who had been colonizing Middle-earth for centuries before) and the island’s own escaped super-survivors. They were joined by the Northmen, who were not descended from Númenor but from the first humans from Hildórien at the beginning of the First Age (from whom the Númenoréans were also descended). They were led by Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anárion.
Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, under Durin IV, joined the army and acted under the banner of Gil-Galad, as deference for the good relations that in the past had the dwarven kingdom and then disappeared elven kingdom of Eregion.
The battle
After driving Sauron’s hosts back to the south, the great clash between the two armies occurred on the plain of Dagorlad.
There, the Last Alliance faced an enemy of a massive number of orcs, Men of the East and South, and some dwarves of eastern houses attracted by the One Ring.
The massacre of the Silvan Elves marked the first phase.
The cause was that Oropher did not wait for instructions from Gil-Galad and decided to attack with all his warriors the army of Mordor, who stopped their attack and made them retreat into a swampy terrain, which later would be called the Marsh of the Dead.
The vast majority of the Sylvanians died there, for although they were skilled, they were not well equipped and were vastly outnumbered by the enemy.
Also, in that first skirmish, Amdír of Lórien died.
After that unfortunate move, the rest of the Allied army attacked and razed everything in its path. For days and even months (the duration of the battle is never fully clarified), the corpses were piling up in a proportion that made it clear that the Last Alliance was winning little by little.
Despite all that happened during the Second Age (and all that was lost during the First Age), the Noldor were still formidable. The Sindar followed them in their struggle and saw their abilities grow alongside their kin.
The Men still retained much blood of Númenor, in addition to the surviving Númenóreans themselves as the kings of Gondor and Arnor, and their anger towards Sauron pushed them to be even more terrible in combat.
The Dwarves were rocky, determined, fearless, and with an extraordinary capacity for endurance.
The battle ended with a large part of Sauron’s army annihilated. There were so many casualties that an exact figure was never determined.
After the battle
The allied victory left the army of Men and Elves a clear path to Sauron’s fortress, Barad-dûr.
There, the Dark Lord was besieged for seven long years. Many small battles ensued, causing painful losses for the Last Alliance (such as the death of Anárion) but eventually forcing Sauron to fight in person.
After terrible combat between Gil-Galad, Elendil, and Sauron himself, the enemy was defeated. The two great kings died. Isildur cut the Ring from the hand of a felled Sauron and destroyed his body but not his spirit, which fled for the umpteenth time to the East.
The enemy army was scattered, and his hosts fled to their homelands. The tower of Barad-dûr was brought down, though its foundations survived (for the Ring was not destroyed, for Isildur kept it), and Mordor was a place that did not recover from the shadow.
The Battle of Dagorlad marked the beginning of the end of the Second Age and set some guidelines that would mark the significant events that would take place throughout the Third Age.
As a small anecdote, there are two more battles of Dagorlad. Both happened in the Third Age:
One happened in 1889 T.E. when King Calimehtar of Gondor defeated the Aurigas.
Another happened during the year 1944 T.E., in which another king of Gondor, Ondoher, finished with another new threat of the Aurigas.