00:00We know that Balin's expedition to reclaim Moria ended in failure and death,
00:05but what actually happened and why did he risk it? Did he ever even stand a chance?
00:11Hi everyone, this is Robert. Welcome to In Deep Geek. On this channel, we cover the best in
00:16fantasy books and TV shows. The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire and The Witcher.
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00:25One of the most moving moments in The Lord of the Rings is when Gimli learns the fate of Balin in
00:31Moria, weeping over his tomb. But what possessed Balin to attempt to retake Moria in the first
00:37place? And what happened? Was there ever a realistic chance that he could have succeeded?
00:43Balin is one of the first characters we are introduced to in The Hobbit. He was the second
00:47dwarf to bundle his way into Bag End for the unexpected party after his brother Dwalin,
00:52and from the beginning stands out from the other dwarves. He is older than most of them. At 178
00:58years old, only Thorin of the company is older, and is described as being very old-looking, with a
01:05white beard. Clearly Thorin, with his mostly still dark hair, has aged a bit better. In other words,
01:12Balin may not have been the oldest member of the company, but he looked it and acted it,
01:17and the others treated him with respect. He is often the dwarf chosen by Tolkien to show how the
01:23dwarves slowly warm to Bilbo. He's the one who first accepts the idea of Bilbo accompanying them,
01:30mistakenly thinking Bilbo is some kind of professional burglar. Actually helping Bilbo
01:35tidy up a bit after the dwarves descended, waiting for him outside the Green Dragon Inn, calling him
01:40good old Bilbo partway through their mission, walking with him, accompanying him partway into the
01:46lonely mountain when the rest of the dwarves held back, and so on. A few years after the story ended,
01:52he even journeyed with Gandalf to visit Bilbo in the Shire. I think Tolkien liked Balin, and wanted us
01:59to like him too. Balin, like many of the dwarves on the mission, was from royal stock. He was a distant
02:06cousin to Thorin, they shared a great-great-grandfather, and lived through most of the main events of dwarf
02:11history in the latter part of the Third Age. He was at Erebor, albeit just as a child, when Smaug
02:17attacked the lonely mountain, leading to their exile. He took part in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs
02:23after King Thror's death. In the final battle of that war, Balin's father, Fundin, was killed. He was part
02:30of King Thrain's escort when Thrain decided to look again upon the lonely mountain, but was captured en route
02:36by Sauron's forces. It was Balin and Dwalin who survived and took the news to Thorin, making him king.
02:42Then, years after that, he was Thorin's right-hand man on his quest of Erebor. In short, all of Balin's life
02:50had been about trying to reclaim those dwarven homelands that he had last been cast out of as a child.
02:56If we are looking for a reason why Balin attempted to retake Moria, I guess it is here. Balin wasn't
03:03young. At 226 years old by that time, he was considered old even by dwarf standards, and his
03:10entire life had been in exile of one kind or another. As a child, he had been forced from Erebor,
03:17but had helped to reclaim it years later. One thing remained. His father had been killed outside the
03:23gates of Moria, the true homeland of Durin's folk. If he was ever to right that wrong, it had to be
03:30now. The second reason why Balin thought he might try to retake Moria is probably because everything
03:37had been quiet there for a long time. The Balrog hadn't been seen or heard from. The orcs of the
03:43Misty Mountains had been soundly defeated in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, and then again in the
03:47Battle of the Five Armies. Sauron had been thrown from southern Mirkwood and was now amassing his
03:53forces in Mordor rather than northwest Middle-earth. The Great Goblin had been killed. Beorn and the
03:59Beornings were now patrolling the lands west of the Anduin. In Erebor, all was well. King Dyn
04:04II had rebuilt it. Laketown had been repaired. Dale refounded. Strong relations with the men nearby had
04:11been forged. We may be able to look back and see that the seeds of war were being sown elsewhere,
04:17but to the Dwarves. It must have felt that their luck had turned. They had spent so much of the
04:23Third Age being chased out of one homeland to the next, but now, finally, they had reclaimed Erebor
04:28and secured it. Had their luck turned? The place they most wanted, their spiritual home,
04:35was Khazad-dûm. Erebor was important, but it wasn't their true home. Khazad-dûm was, and all the signs
04:42from there were pretty good. No sight of the Balrog, the Orcs seemed weakened irrevocably.
04:48Balin was nearing the end of his days. Why not give it a try?
04:53Balin probably didn't think he would be able to walk in without some sort of a fight,
04:57and he got one. He set off with a medium-sized group of dwarves and overcame the Orcs at the
05:02East Gate before heading inside, apparently without much further resistance. It's hard to say whether
05:08Balin had expected this. He wasn't stupid, so I'm sure he knew that there would be more Orcs within,
05:13but as far as we can tell, they decided to avoid the Dwarves in the short term.
05:18Given the size of Khazad-dûm, forty miles from east to west, many miles north to south and
05:24many, many levels up and down, this was not hard. Balin declared victory and established their base
05:30in the 21st Hall and his throne room in the Chamber of Mazabul. He declared himself Lord of Moria.
05:38All seemed well, and it was for about five years. The colony's base was not far from the East Gate,
05:45but they ranged far and wide, discovering many of the ancient treasures they had been seeking for.
05:50Durin's axe and helm, the armoury and mithril depository. But although this was branded as a
05:56colony, dwarves reproduced slowly, and in five years the original group were still roughly the same size.
06:04At which point Balin, perhaps starting to relax a bit, the Orcs weren't as great a threat as he'd feared,
06:10and the Balrog was still nowhere to be seen, went to see the Miramir.
06:15The Miramir is a lake just outside the East Gate of Moria. It has a huge religious importance of the
06:21Dwarves. It's where the first Durin, after whom Durin's folk were named, gazed into the waters and saw a
06:27crown of stars reflected over his head and decided that this was where he should stop his wandering
06:33and build a homeland for his people. You may remember in the books, Gimli pausing there during
06:39the Fellowship's escape from Moria. It was so important to him and his people that he couldn't
06:44pass without pausing to reflect on it, no matter how many Orcs were chasing after them.
06:48Anyway, Balin went out to the Miramir and was tragically shot by an Orc archer. He probably never
06:56even saw the Orc who killed him. The Dwarves carried him back into Khazad-dum and gave him a
07:01burial in a tomb fit for a Lord of Moria, in the chamber he had used as his throne room.
07:06And very soon the Dwarves realised that this was not a one-off. The Orcs were advancing irrevocably
07:12from the east. The east gate fell, and the Dwarves fought a desperate rearguard action,
07:17room by room, chamber by chamber. We read of an epic and strategically important battle in the
07:23second chamber. The first chamber was just inside the east door. Then came the Bridge of Khazad-dum,
07:29which was designed as a defensive structure. You could only cross over it one at a time,
07:34so a small defensive unit could defend it much more easily against a superior invading force.
07:39The Orcs threw themselves over the Bridge in overwhelming numbers. The Dwarves fought bravely
07:46and surely killed many Orcs for each of them, but the numbers told. The Dwarves had to abandon their
07:51best defensive position and let the Orcs in. As a side note here, Balin had brought with him
07:58two of the other Dwarves we know of from The Hobbit, Oin and Ori. Ori was the records keeper. It is his
08:06account of what happened next that the Fellowship find, and that tells us the gruesome details.
08:12The remaining Dwarves clearly decided that the odds were now overwhelmingly against them,
08:17and Oin was dispatched westwards with a small group of Dwarves to see whether the remaining
08:22colonists could escape that way. He made it as far as the West Gate. Durin's Gate. You'll remember the
08:28Fellowship being stuck outside it in the Lord of the Rings. Oin discovered that the waters outside had
08:34now reached as far as the Gate itself. He ventured outside, and the Watcher in the Waters killed him,
08:40and several of his companions. Four made it back to the last few Dwarven colonists. The East Gate was
08:46held by the Orcs, and now they knew that the West Gate was also close to them. They were trapped.
08:51As another side note, there was not usually a lake outside the West Gate of Moria. It seems that the
08:56Orcs dammed the River Cyrenon and flooded the area so that the Watcher in the Water could come right up to
09:02the West Gate. This wasn't just a random attack from the Orcs. They planned this, and deliberately
09:08blocked the West Gate before attacking the East Gate. The Dwarves were trapped before they even knew
09:13it. And then the Orcs attacked. The Dwarves hold themselves up in Balin's throne room, and no doubt
09:20took out many Orcs before their own doom. Years later, Gandalf read Ori's final record, telling of the
09:28final moment as the Orcs prepared to attack. Drums, drums in the deep, was not just a cool line,
09:35it was a record of the Orcs' final battle preparations.
09:39And so ended Balin's attempt to reclaim his people's homeland of Khazad-dûm.
09:44Perhaps, though, we might draw a small, thin line of hope from that hopeless mission.
09:49The reason Gimli and co. went to Rivendell, and were there for the Council of Elrond,
09:53was to seek information on what had happened to Balin, that and to report on the visit of Sauron's
09:59emissary to Erebor. The fellowship that emerged from that Council ultimately led to the destruction
10:04of the Balrog, and with Sauron's demise, the end of the Orcs in Middle-earth. Ultimately,
10:10without Balin and co. knocking on Bilbo's door decades earlier, and Balin himself personally
10:16befriending Bilbo on the quest of Erebor, Bilbo would not have found the Ring, and the Ring would not
10:22have been destroyed, and years later the Dwarves did reclaim Moria. Durin VII led a group back there
10:29in the Fourth Age, and this time it was successful. Balin had the right idea, but perhaps just a couple
10:36of centuries too early.
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