Men of Dale and Esgaroth

Origins and early Dale

The Men of the Long Lake were of the Northmen, the fair-haired kindred of Rhovanion who had once been allies of Gondor, and they had lived around the lake and along the River Running since before the Dwarves came to the Lonely Mountain. When Thráin I founded the kingdom under Erebor in T.A. 1999 and especially after Thrór returned there in 2590, the Men of the valley prospered. The town of Dale grew up in the shadow of the mountain's southern spur, and its market was the meeting place of three peoples: the Dwarves who came down from their gates with weapons, armour and jewels, the Elves of the Woodland Realm who sent wine and goods down the Forest River, and the Men who fed the mountain and carried its trade. Dale was famous for its bells and for the toys and marvels that the Dwarves made for its markets, and its lords grew rich enough to buy dwarf-forged armour for their sons. The last of these lords was Girion.

Smaug

In 2770 the dragon Smaug came down from the north, destroyed Dale, drove the Dwarves out of Erebor, and settled on their hoard. Girion was killed with most of his people; his wife and child escaped down the river, and from them the later kings descended. The Men of the valley withdrew to the lake, where the older settlement of Esgaroth stood on wooden piles out in the water, safe from the dragon because Smaug could not come at it without a bridge and, as the years passed, did not trouble to. The bridge could be cut, and the water was their wall. Lake-town lived on, trading up the Forest River with the Elves and south with Dorwinion and the lands of the Running, and ruled not by a king but by a Master elected from the merchants. The songs of the old days, foretelling the return of the King under the Mountain and the river running with gold, were sung there still, though few believed them.

The return of the King under the Mountain

In the autumn of 2941 Thorin Oakenshield and his companions, with Bilbo, floated into Lake-town in barrels and were feasted by the Master of Lake-town, who saw no harm in encouraging an expedition against the dragon. Two weeks after the Dwarves went north, Smaug fell on the town in the night. Bard, a grim bowman of Girion's line, held the last defence and, warned by a thrush that the dragon's breast had a bare patch, killed him with the Black Arrow, an heirloom of his house. Smaug's fall broke the town, which burned and sank, and the survivors camped shivering on the shore. Bard, whom many now wished to make king, chose instead to help the Master hold the people together and led an army of lake-men north with the Elves of Thranduil to claim a share of the mountain's treasure for the rebuilding of Dale.

The quarrel with Thorin over the hoard ended when the Goblins and Wargs of the Misty Mountains descended on the mountain, and Men, Elves and Dwarves fought together in the Battle of Five Armies. Afterward Dáin Ironfoot honoured Thorin's promise: a fourteenth share went to Bard, who gave the Master a great sum to rebuild Lake-town and used the rest to refound Dale.

The kingdom of Dale

Bard was crowned King of Dale in 2944. Under him and his son Bain the valley was resettled by lake-men and by Northmen from the south and east, the ruined city was rebuilt, and Dale's markets reopened with a trade that made the whole region rich. The Master of Lake-town, who had absconded with the gold and died in the wilderness, was replaced by a wiser successor, and Lake-town rebuilt itself further north on the lake. Dale's people renewed their friendship with Erebor, now under Dáin, and with the Elves, so that at the end of the Third Age Glóin could tell the Council of Elrond that between Dale and the Mountain there was more than trade.

The War of the Ring

Sauron's messengers came to Erebor and Dale in the last years before the war, and King Brand, Bard's grandson, refused their demands. In March 3019 an army of Easterlings crossed the river Carnen and attacked. Brand fell back on the mountain, and on 17 March, the day the captains of the West set out from Minas Tirith, he and Dáin were killed together before the gates of Erebor: Dáin, though very old, standing over Brand's body with his axe. The survivors of Dale and the Dwarves were besieged in the mountain for ten days, until news of the fall of Sauron broke the Easterlings' will and Bard II and Thorin Stonehelm led the sortie that drove them from the land. It was one of the battles of the war that the Ring-bearer never saw, and it kept the north from falling.

Relations with other peoples

The Men of Dale were friends of the Dwarves as few Men ever were, and their alliance with Erebor lasted through the Fourth Age. Their relations with the Elves of the Woodland Realm were those of trading partners, close enough for the Elvenking to march to their aid after the dragon fell, and their language, a Northern tongue of Men, was one that the Dwarves of Erebor spoke among Men. Their enemies were the dragon of the north and the Easterlings of the plains beyond the Carnen.

The Men of Dale and the lake were tall and fair like other Northmen, though the lake-dwellers were said to be sturdier and less horse-proud than their kin. Bard the Bowman was tall, dark-haired and grim of face, an unusual look among his people and one that was remembered as coming from Girion's house. They were boatmen and archers rather than riders; the bowmen of Lake-town were the town's chief defence, and the long yew bow was their weapon.

Esgaroth was a merchant republic ruled by a Master chosen by the old and wise among the townsmen, which is to say by the traders; Dale after 2944 was a kingdom under Bard's line. The lake-men built entirely in wood, on piles driven into the lake bed, with a great hall, quays, and a market-pool where boats from the Forest River unloaded. Their wealth came from carrying trade: wine and goods from the Elves, grain and wares from the south, and after 2941 the products of the Dwarves' forges once more. They sang old songs of the Mountain's kings and the river of gold, and they kept the memory of Girion's fall and of the Black Arrow. Dale, rebuilt, was famous again for its bells and for the markets where the toys of the Dwarves were sold.

The Men of the Long Lake were Northmen who had drifted north along the River Running and settled the lake and the valley below the Lonely Mountain long before the Dwarves came in T.A. 1999. Dale grew from a village into a rich city on the trade between Erebor and the Woodland Realm, and the lake-town of Esgaroth was older still, built out over the water for safety.

After the War of the Ring Dale under Bard II and Erebor under Thorin III Stonehelm were free allies of the Reunited Kingdom, their borders extended and the Easterlings held beyond the Carnen. Dale prospered in the Fourth Age as a kingdom of Men in the far north-east, the strongest Mannish realm between Rohan and the Sea of Rhûn.