Five armies

[Agburanar]

Which were the actual five armies? My list seems to be:
The dwarves,
The elves,
The men of Lake town,
The goblins,
The wargs,
The eagles,
Beorn?

That's 6 or 7 armies so which one doesn't count? The eagles, because they arrived late?

[Lightice]

Eagles and Beorn weren't armies. Wargs were.
So Five Armies were wood elves, lake men, dwarves, goblins and wargs.

[Entlover]

Excuse the contradiction, but I believe the 5 armies were dwarves, elves, men, goblins and wargs (one army), and eagles.

[Spock]

Men
Elves
Dwarves
Eagles
fought
The Hosts of Mordor (wargs, goblins, etc. etc.)

Thus the Battle of the Five Armies.

[noldorlord]

spock: sorry but I don't think the goblins in this encounter were the hordes of mordor. Perhaps the spawn of but not the hordes. They came from thei own cities and declared war because they wanted to not because sauron did. Sorry for being picky...

[Wayfarer]

The Orcs and Goblins from the misty mountains and Moria.
Wargs from Wilderland.
Dwarves from the Iron Mountains.
Elves From Mirkwood.
Men from Esgaroth.

That's it. The Eagles and the bats were not armies.

[Agburanar]

Goblins- led by Bolg of the North from Mt. Gundabad, High pass and Moria.
Men- led by Bard, from Esgaroth, and Beorn?
Elves- Led by Thranduil, from Mirkwood
Dwarves- Led by Dain (from the Iron Hills) and Thorin (Thorin's co.)
Wargs- Led by some big wolf! From the foothills of the Misty Mountains.

Yes.

[HOBBIT]

What more is there to discuss.

[Michael Martinez]

"Upon one side were the Goblins and the wild Wolves, and upon the other were the Elves and Men and Dwarves."

I'm afraid the Eagles arrived too late to count as the fifth army. But I would regard their force as an army nonetheless.

[Spock]

hmmm, silly me I only enumerated what is in the original book.
allies, hosts, associates et.al. joined together as in a coalition.

[Greg Ferlito]

I agree with Entlover the wargs and goblins count as one army and Beorn is not an army

[dark over lord]

Originally posted by Agburanar
Elves- Led by Thranduil, from Mirkwood
Was Legolas at the Battle of the Five Armys since he's a wood elf (and not Elrond's son like in the cartoon), even though they don't menton him.

[Ñólendil]

I don't remember a cartoon where Legolas is Elrond's son. He's only in the Bakshi Fellowship of the Ring movie, but I don't think he was Elrond's son in that. It's not said whether or not he was in the Battle, but I don't see why he wouldn't be. You'd think Legolas would have mentioned it to Frodo or Gimli at one point though.

[dark over lord]

in that cartoon in which they covered th first two books and part of the last they meet legolas and he says that hes elronds son

[Twilight]

Maybe Legolas wanted to keep his role to himself. Frodo split off from the company in the first book, so that was before he was friends with Gimli. He might not have wanted Gimli to know because that could have been a potentially senesitive issue. I am sure that Gimli got a rahter biased acount of the story, and it would have strained relations between them to know that Legolas was part of an army that was making demands from the dwarves.

The king needed somebody to stay behing and run things while he was gone. Legolas would have been a good choise for that. I don't think there is much evidence for either possibility.

[Entlover]

Legolas is Thranduil's son, king of the Mirkwood elves (as you all know). They probably were condensing characters and made Elrond stand for all the elf kings. But I wonder if Legolas was alive at the Battle of Five Armies; wasn't that, like, 60 years earlier? Gimli was Gloin's son and wasn't mentioned in the battle either, was he? (If I were really together I would know all this off the top of my head, but sorry, I don't)

[Starr Polish]

Legolas would have been around because elves are immortal and most Tolkien scholars think he was around Arwen's age (who is around 3000 years old), but Tolkien never specified his age. In interviews with Orlando Bloom he says his character is 2931 years old...probably just some number that Peter jackson pulled out of the air, but he is at least a few thousand years old, so he would have been around.

I look at this later and say HOLY RUN ON SENTENCE...I'm tired, cut me a break :D