Smaug

Origin

Nothing is told of Smaug's beginning except that he came from the North, where the dragons that survived the ruin of Beleriand had bred again in the Northern Waste and the Grey Mountains. He was a fire-drake and a winged dragon both, red-gold in colour, and by the time he appears in the histories he was already the mightiest dragon of his day. The Dwarves of the Grey Mountains had been at war with the dragons since T.A. 2570 and had lost a king to a cold-drake in 2589; Smaug was of the same brood, but far greater.

The coming of the dragon

In T.A. 2770 Smaug flew south to Erebor. The Kingdom under the Mountain was then at the height of its wealth under Thrór, and the town of Dale below it was rich in its trade. The dragon came out of the north in a storm of fire, burned Dale, killed Girion its lord and most of its warriors, and entered the Mountain through the Front Gate. The Dwarves who were outside, among them Thrór, his son Thráin and his grandson Thorin, escaped by a secret door on the western side; those within were killed. Smaug gathered all the treasure of the Mountain into a single heap in the great hall of Thrór and lay down upon it, and there he stayed. He came out from time to time to prey on the folk of Dale, who abandoned the town, and on the Men of the Long Lake, until the country for miles around was a desolation and the Men of Esgaroth spoke of the dragon as a thing of old tales.

The hoard

Smaug knew his treasure piece by piece and could tell at once if a single cup were missing. Lying on it for so long, he had pressed jewels and shards of gold into the soft hide of his belly until it was armoured like his back, a waistcoat of gems that no arrow could pierce; but there was one bare patch, high on the left breast, that he had not noticed. The hoard included the wealth of Thrór's people, the gold and jewels of Dale and, buried somewhere in it, the Arkenstone of Thráin, the great white jewel of the kings under the Mountain.

The unexpected party

In T.A. 2941 Thorin and twelve companions, with the hobbit Bilbo as their burglar, came to the Mountain by the secret door. On Durin's Day the door was found and Bilbo crept down the tunnel alone, into the red glow of the hall, and saw the dragon asleep on his gold. He took a great two-handled cup and fled. Smaug woke, missed the cup at once, and burst out of the Front Gate in a rage; he flew around the Mountain, found and ate the ponies, and burned the slopes about the hidden door.

Bilbo went down a second time, wearing the Ring. Smaug was awake and only pretending to sleep, and there followed the most dangerous conversation of Bilbo's life. The dragon could not see him but could smell him, and he drew him on with flattery and riddling questions. Bilbo answered in riddles of his own, naming himself by his deeds rather than his name; Smaug, delighted, guessed at Lake-town from the riddle of the barrels and turned his talk to the dwarves, sowing doubt about their honesty and their share-out until Bilbo felt the dragon-spell working on him. He kept his head long enough to flatter the dragon into showing his jewelled belly, saw the bare patch, and made his escape up the tunnel with the dragon's fire behind him. A thrush on the doorstep heard him describe the patch to the dwarves.

The burning of Lake-town

Smaug guessed that the thieves had come from the Lake. He first tried to trap them, smashing the western slope of the Mountain and sealing the secret door with his fire; then he flew south down the Running River to Esgaroth. The Men of Lake-town cut the bridges and shot at him, but their arrows broke on his hide. He set the wooden town ablaze quarter by quarter. Only Bard, a grim archer of the town who was a descendant of Girion of Dale, stood his ground with the last of the bowmen; the old thrush came to him and told him of the bare patch, and Bard, who had the old gift of the Men of Dale for understanding the bird's speech, fitted the Black Arrow, an heirloom of his house, and shot the dragon through the breast as he stooped over the town. Smaug fell out of the sky onto Esgaroth and destroyed it in his death, and his bones lay ever after among the drowned ruins, with the gems of his armour scattered in the shallows where no one dared to dive for them.

Aftermath and significance

Smaug's death was the hinge of the year: it emptied the Mountain, drew the Men of the Lake and the Elves of Mirkwood to the hoard, and led to the Battle of Five Armies. Gandalf later explained that his real reason for backing Thorin's quest had been the dragon himself. Sauron was preparing for war, and a great dragon in the North was a weapon he might have used against Rivendell and Lothlórien while Gondor fought in the south. With Smaug dead, and the Dwarves and Men of Dale restored, the North held in the War of the Ring.

He was the last of the great worms. When Gandalf spoke at the Council of Elrond of dragons whose fire was no longer hot enough to melt a Ring of Power, Smaug had been dead for seventy-seven years, and no dragon since has been named in any history.

Shot through the bare patch on his breast by Bard's Black Arrow and fell dead on Lake-town, T.A. 2941; his bones remained in the lake.