thaluikhain said:
I'm with the Orcs, the movie version of the city was a terrible design. Especially the nice flat featureless plain surrounding the place for orcs to mass armies on.
Nobody thought to dig a ditch of put up some pointy sticks? For that matter, nobody tried growing any crops or anything?
There was a wall built for defence on the plains but Denethor's madness/corruption meant that it was in a poor state of repair and under-manned; as well the Pelennor fields were actually farmland in and of themselves. The film skipped a lot of the practical details of life in the various realms, largely focussing on the major cities/encampments.
"Many tall men heavily cloaked stood beside him, and behind them in the mist loomed a wall of stone. Partly ruinous it seemed, but already before the night was passed the sound of hurried labour could be heard: beat of hammers, clink of trowels, and the creak of wheels...Gandalf passed now into the wide land beyond the Rammas Echor. So the men of Gondor called the out-wall that they had built with great labour, after Ithilien fell under the shadow of their enemy. For ten leagues or more it ran from the mountains' feet and back again, enclosing in its fence the fields of the Pelennor: fair and fertile townlands on the long slopes and terraces falling to the deep levels of the Anduin. At its furthest point from the Great Gate of the city, north-eastward, the wall was four leagues distant, and there from a frowning bank it overlooked the long flats beside the river, and men had made it high and strong; for at that point, upon a walled causeway, the road came in from the fords and bridges of Osgiliath and passed through a guarded gate between embattled towers. At its nearest point the wall was little more than one league from the city, and that was south-eastward. There Anduin, going in a wide knee about the hills of Emyn Arnen in South Ithilien, bent sharply west, and the out-wall rose upon its brink; and beneath it lay the quays and landings of the Harlond for craft that came upstream from the southern fiefs.
The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards, and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to Anduin."
It goes on to mention the regions of Lossarnach, Lebennin and the fiefdom of Belfalas (Dol Amroth) - areas with which the city itself could draw levies and trade for food (and, again unmentioned in the film, troops).
