Q: Why Would Smaug Need to Cross a Bridge to Attack Lake-town?
ANSWER: In the book, The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien provided several descriptions of Lake-town (Esgaroth upon the Long Lake). Here are some excerpts:
J.R.R. Tolkien’s illustration of Smaug’s death. Please do not hotlink.
Hiding behind one of the largest barrels Bilbo discovered the trapdoors and their use, and lurking there, listening to the talk of the king’s servants, he learned how the wine and other goods came up the rivers, or over land, to the Long Lake. It seemed a town of Men still throve there, built out on bridges far into the water as a protection against enemies of all sorts, and especially against the dragon of the Mountain. From Lake-town the barrels were brought up the Forest River. Often they were just tied together like big rafts and poled or rowed up the stream; sometimes they were loaded on to flat boats.
And…
Not far from the mouth of the Forest River was the strange town he heard the elves speak of in the king’s cellars. It was not built on the shore, though there were a few huts and buildings there, but right out on the surface of the lake, protected from the swirl of the entering river by a promontory of rock which formed a calm bay. A great bridge made of wood ran out to where on huge piles made of forest trees was built a busy wooden town, not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon-mountain. They still throve on the trade that came up the great river from the South and was carted past the falls to their town; but in the great days of old, when Dale in the North was rich and prosperous, they had been wealthy and powerful, and there had been fleets of boats on the waters, and some were filled with gold and some with warriors in armour, and there had been wars and deeds which were now only a legend. The rotting piles of a greater town could still be seen along the shores when the waters sank in a drought.
And …
“Follow me then,” said the captain, and with six men about them he led them over the bridge through the gates and into the market-place of the town. This was a wide circle of quiet water surrounded by the tall piles on which were built the greater houses, and by long wooden quays with many steps and ladders going down to the surface of the lake. From one great hall shone many lights and there came the sound of many voices. They passed its doors and stood blinking in the light looking at long tables filled with folk.
And …
There was once more a tremendous excitement and enthusiasm. But the grim-voiced fellow ran hotfoot to the Master. “The dragon is coming or I am a fool!” he cried. “Cut the bridges! To arms! To arms!”
Then warning trumpets were suddenly sounded, and echoed along the rocky shores. The cheering stopped and the joy was turned to dread. So it was that the dragon did not find them quite unprepared. Before long, so great was his speed, they could see him as a spark of fire rushing towards them and growing ever huger and more bright, and not the most foolish doubted that the prophecies had gone rather wrong. Still they had a little time. Every vessel in the town was filled with water, every warrior was armed, every arrow and dart was ready, and the bridge to the land was thrown down and destroyed, before the roar of Smaug’s terrible approach grew loud, and the lake rippled red as fire beneath the awful beating of his wings.
Amid shrieks and wailing and the shouts of men he came over them, swept towards the bridges and was foiled! The bridge was gone, and his enemies were on an island in deep water-too deep and dark and cool for his liking. If he plunged into it, a vapour and a steam would arise enough to cover all the land with a mist for days; but the lake was mightier than he, it would quench him before he could pass through.
It is of this latter passage that a reader asks:
My question is, what difference would the bridge make in defending the town against Smaug? Why would Smaug need to cross the bridge, as opposed to simply flying over the lake to Esgaroth and perching on top of one of the buildings? Perhaps it was because Esgaroth floated on the lake’s surface, while the bridge itself was fixed to the bottom of the lake. Therefore, the bridge could support Smaug’s weight, but the buildings could not. Is that the reason that the bridge matters? If so, would it not have been clever of the lake men to deliberately build the bridge so that it would collapse under the weight of a dragon?
So, let me preface my answer by saying that I believe J.R.R. Tolkien had a very specific image in mind about his dragons, in terms of how they would fly and how they would move across the land. And I think he must have felt that the act of flying would impair some of a dragon’s physical actions, such as breaking into buildings and grabbing people (either to eat or to kill with his powerful jaws). But we can also look at the behavior of dragons in Tolkien’s stories. For example, Glaurung (a non-flying dragon) loved to taunt his victims, and to cast spells upon them. Thus he wove his evil magic around Turin and his sister Niënor. Smaug, too, sat upon his mound of gold and searched for Bilbo even while engaging in a contest of wits with the (invisible) Hobbit. Finally, Dáin I and his son Frór were both slain at the door to the dwarf-king’s hall by a cold-drake.
Lake-town by J.R.R. Tolkien. Please do not hotlink to the image.
So I think that Tolkien felt there was a very strong, perhaps necessary ground-based behavior for dragons. We don’t know if the cold-drake could fly or not. We’re not even sure what Tolkien meant by “cold-drake”, since his other dragons apparently all breathed fire. Whether Smaug could have crawled over the buildings of the town without sinking into the water is not clear to me. Tolkien’s full-color illustration of Lake-town seems to suggest that the piles supporting the buildings were of a similar strength to the piles supporting the main bridge.
Should the men of Lake-town have known how much weight the bridge could bear? In other words, in order to create a dragon-trap, how would they know what a dragon’s weight should be? It’s not like they could weigh and measure Smaug before he attacked. Furthermore, their carts and horses might — collectively — equal a dragon’s weight depending on the loads they were bearing, so they would run a risk of drowning themselves if the bridge collapsed under “a dragon’s weight”. I think, therefore, that Tolkien had the right idea in that throwing down the bridge would discourage the dragon from creeping up to the houses and clawing around inside for people; also, he would be unable to easily climb over the houses and scoop people from their boats.
Landing on the buildings might, in Tolkien’s view, have exposed the dragon to all sorts of attacks by the men from many directions. Hence, in order to keep his enemies/prey in front of him he would need to approach the town by the bridge. Also, if Smaug could stand on the bridge with ease he would be able to attack any boats that tried to come near by, flaming them.
Furthermore, I think Tolkien had an idea of what powered the dragon’s fire. So far as I know he never attempted to explain this in any of his published writings. But whatever it was, water would have quenched that internal furnace — perhaps even by mere contact with Smaug’s skin. It’s as if the dragon’s body was its own furnace, and he had to maintain his distance from water in order to generate the heat to breathe fire. This is pure speculation on my part.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s ideas about weaponry and tactics have sometimes been challenged by readers with knowledge and experience in such matters, but when it comes to dragons no one is really expert enough to know if Tolkien’s dragons were realistic in any way. Tolkien’s imagination was the final authority for how his stories worked and we can only judge his logic by what he left behind in print or his private notes. Unfortunately, there is nothing that explains why a dragon would be confounded, perhaps even disarmed or weakened, by water.
Another possible factor is that the biggest danger to Lake-town, dragon or no dragon, was fire. In the real world, the roofs would likely have been tile or slate, for protection against sparks from chimneys. A flying dragon, using only fire, wouldn’t have found many easy targets. A walking dragon, on the other hand, could target the wooden walls, even if he didn’t try to destroy the buildings with teeth, claws, or tail.
One of the drawbacks to flying and flaming is breathing. Flying is energy-intensive, and it’s possible that Smaug couldn’t inhale enough air to maintain a good flame while breathing heavily. Standing on the ground, all of his breath could go into producing a good blowtorch flame.
Hey, I was just wondering about this as I finished the Hobbit again this week! I appreciate the analysis of this. It makes a lot more sense.
Maybe he required just to gain a good position to kill men who were after all small in comparison to him (he wanted to have his revenge and destroy people specifically not just buildings, after all many could have survived that way than he would possibly want, maybe it’s simply tactics, he is intelligent and would choose the most efficient ways to destroy). I wonder also if his fire was indeed quenched, what would have happened then? Glaurung entered the river without problems (and caused a great mist to arise that even was to his great advantage) maybe it would simply impede his fire breathing ability for some period of time (maybe he would need to rest to regain strength and internally heat himself again and he simply didn’t want that?).
I had forgotten about Glaurung’s mist. That is consistent with Smaug’s concern. Unfortunately, Tolkien never really explained how his dragons worked.
Glaurung’s “surface temperature” would seem to greatly exceed Smaug’s. As you point out, Glaurung caused a vast vapour to rise out of the Narog River simply by laying in it. In comparison, for nearly two centuries Smaug laid on precious things that were made of gold and silver, apparently without causing them to melt to become disfigured.
Another possibility is that Glaurung was using a form of sorcery to create the mist. Or perhaps Tolkien simply felt no need to reconcile every aspect of the two stories.
You suggest that “Smaug laid on precious things that were made of gold and silver, apparently without causing them to melt to become disfigured.” Perhaps so, but his underbelly did become encrusted with such stuff, and perhaps this was due to temperature fusing his scaly skin to the treasure. That might corroborate the “surface temperature” theory.
Perhaps, though in the text Smaug states, “I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems” (Annotated Hobbit, p. 282) Bilbo says that Smaug possessed “a waistcoat of fine diamonds” (p. 282) and a “diamond waistcoat” (p. 285). Therefore, Smaug’s armor did not appear to include melted gold or silver. Still, the diamonds must have been attached to Smaug somehow, so perhaps the waistcoat had a “glue” that consisted of melted metal that was not very noticeable.
Glaurung too laid on treasure gold and jewels, all the loot he gathered from Nargothrond (denying orcs their share :)) and he didn’t melt anything. While Glaurung status as Father of Dragons apparently the first of his kind is important that doesn’t mean that he was in some ways that much different from other dragons, he wasn’t even the most powerful of all dragons as this honor belongs to the one who surpassed granddaddy in many ways Ancalagon the Black (even Gandalf acknowledges him as the greatest of dragons, he also had wings a trait that immediate Glaurung brood did not posess, but it seems in the War of Wrath ther was already a huge horde of flying dragons at Morgoth’s command).
Dragons must drink, though. How do they stay hydrated? A little water won’t kill them, though it might impede their ability to generate fire for a small time. If they didn’t drink, they wouldn’t be much of a threat to anybody. Water isn’t all that bad for Dragons. Even if Smaug couldn’t breath fire, he could still do immense damage.
Maybe basic physics is behind Tolkien’s thinking.Flying takes energy and concentration, and being airborne means you will to an extent bounce off something you strike. A creature on the ground will be more powerful than one in the air (see how many birds land to feed or fight). Whilst Smaug is swooping he has momentum, but if he ‘hovers’ (and a lot of birds can’t hover)the power of his claws or tails is so much less. Indeed if he can’t hover, those pesky humans are going to be hard to get to. Flimsy wood-and-stick buildings (likely with wooden shingle roofs)may not even hold his weight. On the ground he can dig in his claws and swish that tail or dart forward his neck. He also doesn’t expose his underside…
As to the seeming conflict between a dragon’s supposed need to drink and Smaug’s reluctance to risk the deep, dark, cold water of the Lake, I would say this.
First, there is a huge difference between drinking a little cold water, and jumping in over your head in frigid water.
If a warm-blooded human can die from hypothermia in a matter of minutes, imagine what freezing or at least very cold water would do to a reptilian dragon.
Also, what I recall of the Silmarillion’s description of dragons, and of their creator, Melkor, implies much about their nature.
Melkor, of all the Valar, exulted in extremes of heat and cold, and might have imbued his dragons with varying degrees of elemental heat or cold.
Lastly, even Melkor could not conquer large bodies of water. In the Valaquenta, p.30, it says,
“Melkor hated the sea, for he could not subdue it.” While it is true that a lake is not a sea, for a elementally-imbued fire dragon, it might as well be.
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Another possible factor is that the biggest danger to Lake-town, dragon or no dragon, was fire. In the real world, the roofs would likely have been tile or slate, for protection against sparks from chimneys. A flying dragon, using only fire, wouldn’t have found many easy targets. A walking dragon, on the other hand, could target the wooden walls, even if he didn’t try to destroy the buildings with teeth, claws, or tail.
One of the drawbacks to flying and flaming is breathing. Flying is energy-intensive, and it’s possible that Smaug couldn’t inhale enough air to maintain a good flame while breathing heavily. Standing on the ground, all of his breath could go into producing a good blowtorch flame.
Hey, I was just wondering about this as I finished the Hobbit again this week! I appreciate the analysis of this. It makes a lot more sense.
Maybe he required just to gain a good position to kill men who were after all small in comparison to him (he wanted to have his revenge and destroy people specifically not just buildings, after all many could have survived that way than he would possibly want, maybe it’s simply tactics, he is intelligent and would choose the most efficient ways to destroy). I wonder also if his fire was indeed quenched, what would have happened then? Glaurung entered the river without problems (and caused a great mist to arise that even was to his great advantage) maybe it would simply impede his fire breathing ability for some period of time (maybe he would need to rest to regain strength and internally heat himself again and he simply didn’t want that?).
I had forgotten about Glaurung’s mist. That is consistent with Smaug’s concern. Unfortunately, Tolkien never really explained how his dragons worked.
Glaurung’s “surface temperature” would seem to greatly exceed Smaug’s. As you point out, Glaurung caused a vast vapour to rise out of the Narog River simply by laying in it. In comparison, for nearly two centuries Smaug laid on precious things that were made of gold and silver, apparently without causing them to melt to become disfigured.
Another possibility is that Glaurung was using a form of sorcery to create the mist. Or perhaps Tolkien simply felt no need to reconcile every aspect of the two stories.
You suggest that “Smaug laid on precious things that were made of gold and silver, apparently without causing them to melt to become disfigured.” Perhaps so, but his underbelly did become encrusted with such stuff, and perhaps this was due to temperature fusing his scaly skin to the treasure. That might corroborate the “surface temperature” theory.
Perhaps, though in the text Smaug states, “I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems” (Annotated Hobbit, p. 282) Bilbo says that Smaug possessed “a waistcoat of fine diamonds” (p. 282) and a “diamond waistcoat” (p. 285). Therefore, Smaug’s armor did not appear to include melted gold or silver. Still, the diamonds must have been attached to Smaug somehow, so perhaps the waistcoat had a “glue” that consisted of melted metal that was not very noticeable.
Glaurung too laid on treasure gold and jewels, all the loot he gathered from Nargothrond (denying orcs their share :)) and he didn’t melt anything. While Glaurung status as Father of Dragons apparently the first of his kind is important that doesn’t mean that he was in some ways that much different from other dragons, he wasn’t even the most powerful of all dragons as this honor belongs to the one who surpassed granddaddy in many ways Ancalagon the Black (even Gandalf acknowledges him as the greatest of dragons, he also had wings a trait that immediate Glaurung brood did not posess, but it seems in the War of Wrath ther was already a huge horde of flying dragons at Morgoth’s command).
Dragons must drink, though. How do they stay hydrated? A little water won’t kill them, though it might impede their ability to generate fire for a small time. If they didn’t drink, they wouldn’t be much of a threat to anybody. Water isn’t all that bad for Dragons. Even if Smaug couldn’t breath fire, he could still do immense damage.
Maybe basic physics is behind Tolkien’s thinking.Flying takes energy and concentration, and being airborne means you will to an extent bounce off something you strike. A creature on the ground will be more powerful than one in the air (see how many birds land to feed or fight). Whilst Smaug is swooping he has momentum, but if he ‘hovers’ (and a lot of birds can’t hover)the power of his claws or tails is so much less. Indeed if he can’t hover, those pesky humans are going to be hard to get to. Flimsy wood-and-stick buildings (likely with wooden shingle roofs)may not even hold his weight. On the ground he can dig in his claws and swish that tail or dart forward his neck. He also doesn’t expose his underside…
As to the seeming conflict between a dragon’s supposed need to drink and Smaug’s reluctance to risk the deep, dark, cold water of the Lake, I would say this.
First, there is a huge difference between drinking a little cold water, and jumping in over your head in frigid water.
If a warm-blooded human can die from hypothermia in a matter of minutes, imagine what freezing or at least very cold water would do to a reptilian dragon.
Also, what I recall of the Silmarillion’s description of dragons, and of their creator, Melkor, implies much about their nature.
Melkor, of all the Valar, exulted in extremes of heat and cold, and might have imbued his dragons with varying degrees of elemental heat or cold.
Lastly, even Melkor could not conquer large bodies of water. In the Valaquenta, p.30, it says,
“Melkor hated the sea, for he could not subdue it.” While it is true that a lake is not a sea, for a elementally-imbued fire dragon, it might as well be.