There weren't any civilians....they were sent out of the city a few days before. Well, any women, at least, and only a couple of boys who stayed to help the Healers. As for the men of the city, they probably took up arms to defend it. But overall, there wouldn't have been many civilian casualties at all.

Out of curiousity, are you basing your arguments off of the book or the movie? Because so far your evidence seems to be from the movie.

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My Minas Tirith attack is movie based, I'm trying to expel that right now. My sources for Ithilien being empty and the plague are from sourcebooks or the books themselves.

Keep in mind that the plague was a while before the events of the War of the Ring.

Another important thing to note that only Minas Tirith and the areas right by the Anduin were affected directly by the battles--they were the only ones doing the fighting, really. The rest of Gondor only sent a small portion of its fighting strength, and it was never attacked. So only Minas Tirith--to be more specific, only Minas Tirith's soldiers--were reduced in number. The rest of Gondor would've had a relatively stable population, so it's not like they'd need to get the population stable again before they could re-colonize Ithilien.

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The rest of Gondor, arguably, wasn't anywhere near as populated. The urban concentration in Gondor is on the River Anduin and many of those cities no longer exist. About the plague: of course it was awhile ago, but soon after it happend Gondor proceeded to get its butt kicked by most of its enemies and lose a monumental amount of territory, and, therefore, population.

Well, it lost it's territories in Harad, basically. That's about it. I would call that more of a occupied nation than a territory of Gondor, really.

But you do have a point about the greatest concentration of population being by the Anduin. However, I still don't think Gondor was affected enough that not many people would move there. At least Emyn Arnen would've been repopulated.

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According to my Middle Earth Atlas large parts of Rhun, all of Rohan, and the coast of Harad, including Umbard, were part of Gondor at its height, just for reference. After the plague the lands of Rohan were depopulated along with Osgiliath and Minas Tirith and Ithil, which the latter soon fell and the first was sacked after the last king died.

To address your point about Emyn Arnen: maybe they would keep that for themselves and just give the depopulated woodlands to Legolas?

You know, if we're going to continue debating about this, we should probably start a new topic.

I'm sure that the elves would make up at least 50% of the population, but I don't think they'd get all the woodlands.

Carlenardhon was given away freely by Cirion to Eorl, so that doesn't really count as a loss, while Gondor had been losing Rhun and Harad over time, not right after the plague, though they did suffer quite a few setbacks at that time. However, the plague was almost fifteen hundred years before the War of the Ring (III 1636), so Gondor had time to recover from that event.

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Not neessarily, fifteen hundred years of losses and near constant warfare are NOT recovery.

But it wasn't necessarily 1500 years of defeats. They had a number of victories during that time. When Earnur ruled they did really well.

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I'm trying to think of a way to steer this conversation back to Ithilien, Faramir, and Legolas...

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<img src="http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j7/imladriseeker/Lady_of_Ithilien.jpg">
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Erm...very well, I'll just abandon this argument/thread, it's getting nowhere.

what is this about the population of ithilien??
anyone care to put in all in a nut shell for me??

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#//ArhirilTINDOMIEL;
LadyOFhealings
I have the AttentionSpan of a SQUIRREL!![yes i do!]

GypsyGOLDdoesNOTchink&glitter`ItGleamsINtheSUN&NEIGHSinTHEdark

Basically we were talking about whether or not Gondor had a large enough population that people would move to Ithilien to re-populate it.

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Yes, I support that Gondor handed the lordship to Legolas to colonise it for them, because as 'Prince of Ithilien' he would be a vassal to the King of Gondor, correct?

^who? Legolas or Faramir?

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<img src="http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j7/imladriseeker/Lady_of_Ithilien.jpg">
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Legolas, I wrote it in that post.