Conflict beyond the Wall

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War Beyond the Wall
Date 296 AC-Ongoing
Location Beyond the Wall
Battles Fist of the First Men | Bridge of Skulls | Castle Black
Belligerents
1. Night's Watch
2. Others
3. Wildlings

Conflict Beyond the Wall, refering to an ongoing conflicts taking place Beyond the Wall, the mightiest, oldest defensive structure known to men, which entire purpose was to guard against the return of the Others, who emerged during the Long Night. Since then the Night's Watch stood it's watch for about 8000 years now, defending Westeros from threats from Beyond the Wall, During that time its initial task generally forgotten and instead guarding against the human Wildlings who hold the lands beyond and occasionally raiding and trying to cross the Wall into the richer lands to the south, become its task.

The main events of this three-sided conflict take place in the far North of the Seven Kingdoms and unknown or considered unimportant to the majority of population, especially with the War of the Five Kings ravaging through the country. It is not surprising that this war has not come up with an official name. However this conflict seems to be the corner stone that would determine the outcome of everything.


Night's Watch Decline

Before the time of Aegon I conquered Westeros, the Night's Watch boasted nineteen castles along the hundred leagues of the Wall, accounting over ten thousand men at arms with Castle Black quartered five thousand fighting men with all their horses, servants, and equipment. But It's power has dwindling during the last 300 years and During the events of the A Game of Thrones, The Watch only manning three castles Castle Black, located in the middle of the wall with about six hundred men, Shadow Tower at the far west of the Wall overlooking the mountains, with about two hundred men, and the coastal Eastwatch with even fewer men. A bare third of them are fighting men.

997 Lord Commander of the Night's Watch Jeor Mormont, was deeply concerned by the declining power of the Watch, and the rising threat of the wildling beyond the Wall, whose raids have increased on the people south of the wall in recent years. He tried to make it more difficult for the wildlings to know their comings and goings by a more random system, varying the number of patrols and the days of their departure, to make it more difficult for the wildlings to know their comings and goings. Sometimes sending a larger force to one of the abandoned castles for a fortnight or a moon's turn as well.


The King Beyond the Wall and The Great Ranging

Even before the beginning of Robert's Rebellion, Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall, was gathering wildling forces around him in an attempt to stave off attacks from the Others and recover the Horn of Winter. The Horn was needed as a fail-safe against the Night's Watch, as it was reputed in legend to be able to bring down the entire Wall with a single sounding. While most thought that the Horn was just a myth, Mance believed not only that it was real but that he could find it, deep in the frozen mountains known as the Frostfangs.

After the disappearance of a group of rangers led by Ser Waymar Royce,[1] a second group led by First Ranger Benjen Stark went north to find their missing Brothers and discover what was becoming of all the wildlings.[2] After the subsequent disappearance of this second group, and the continued realignment of known wildling population centers, Lord Commander Jeor Mormont organized an expedition of over 300 Brothers and personally led them north to an ancient settlement near the Skirling Pass, east of the Frostfangs, called the Fist of the First Men.[3][4]

While Lord Commander Mormont led his small army north, several groups were dispatched by the Watch to scout ahead. One of these groups was led by Qhorin Halfhand, a senior ranger and the second in command of the Night's Watch western most castle, the Shadow Tower. Accompanied by a half-dozen other rangers, including Jon Snow, a bastard of House Stark, the Halfhand discovered a vast wildling host deep in the Frostfangs. The group was trapped by wildling forces and either killed or went missing one by one until only the Halfhand and Jon Snow remained. At this point, to ensure that someone survived to bring word back to the Lord Commander, Qhorin Halfhand allowed Snow to slay him in a duel, thereby earning Snow the trust of the wildlings. With the destruction of the Halfhand's party, and Snow's inability to escape in time, the Lord Commander would receive no warning of the wildling host's purpose or composition, now numbering over a hundred thousand.


The Half-Hand and the Battle of the Fist of First Men

After the Night's Watch encamped on the Fist, a debate ensued among the Watch's leadership as to what the best course of action was to deal with the Wildling threat. Some, such as Thoren Smallwood, advocated attacking the wildling host along its line of march. The argument proved to be of no consequence when night fell and a force of Others and wights assaulted the Fist. The Watch had some initial success with flaming arrows and spear walls, but the massive waves of wights and the deadly Others overcame the Watch's defenses. Realizing that his position was untenable and remaining on the Fist would result in the overrunning and ultimate destruction of his forces, Lord Commander Mormont ordered the Brothers to attempt a breakout of their encircled position. Once mounted, the Brothers formed a wedge and managed to fight their way off the Fist.

Mormont's savaged forces managed to make a long march through the snow-covered wilderness to Craster's Keep, a Wildling estate known to the Brothers to be friendly to the Watch. The Watch was harried and harassed all through the night as they made their retreat, and by the time that they reached Craster's Keep less than one hundred Brothers remained of the original force. It was here, desperate and angry at their situation, that a group of Brothers rebelled and murdered not only Craster but Lord Commander Mormont as well. A small group of loyalists managed to escape the carnage and make their way back to the Wall, bringing news of the disastrous expedition's fate.

The Battles of Castle Black and The Gap

Mance Rayder, now knowing that the bulk of The Watch's fighting forces had been wiped out on the Fist by their mutual enemy, made his way out of the Frostfangs and started his march toward the Wall. Mance formed a plan to divert the remaining fighting men from both Castle Black and the Shadow Tower to the far west so he could send a team to scale the Wall and take the unwalled Castle Black from behind. With his diversionary force riding hard for the west, Lord Steward Bowen Marsh marshaled his forces and took the bait leaving only the old, the green, and the sickly behind to defend Castle Black. After this time, Jon Snow escaped from the wildlings and managed to return to Castle Black with warning of the approaching enemy force of Thenns and Wildling raiders sweeping around to their southern flank.

The Battle for Castle Black began in the early morning hours as wildling raiders and Thenn warriors stormed into Castle Black. Jon Snow and Donal Noye, Castle Black's blacksmith and de facto commander, organized the defense around archers in the towers and a line of fighting men on the massive wooden staircase that zigzagged up the south face of the Wall. After the archers took a heavy toll on the wildling force the battle was joined on the stair. Once the majority of the wildling forces had mounted the stair and were pushing back the crumbling defense the Watch sprung their desperate trap. The stair, soaked in oil between the last Night's Watch line of defense and the base of the structure, was set ablaze, destroying the stair and annihilating the wildling forces. While the raiding party had been defeated Mance's main force had yet to be dealt with and the Watch's primary means of transporting men and materials to the Wall had been destroyed.

With the news that his advance party had been defeated, and he would have to assault the Wall, Mance assembled his host at the tree line. Aftrer a small probing attack at night, the first morning's attacks were spearheaded by Giants mounted on mammoths. Only one giant, Mag the Mighty, King of the Giants, managed to breach the massive doors that lead to the tunnel underneath the Wall. Donal Noye and several brothers defended the tunnel system with spears and arrow fire from behind the internal gate and murder-hole system built into the tunnel. While they managed to kill all of the attackers, including Mag, and held the interior portcullis under the Wall, all the defenders were slain, including Noye, whose body was found crushed by Mag, his sword thrust though the Giant's neck.

With the death of Donal Noye, Jon Snow assumed command of the defense of the Wall at the request of Maester Aemon. Over the next several days Snow managed to throw back repeated attacks on the Wall by using catapults, archers, flaming arrows, boiling oils and finally frozen barrels of rock and ice used to destroy Mance's armored battering rams. Fortunately for the defenders of Castle Black, reinforcements arrived in the form of Brothers fresh from the battle at the Gap, Bowen Marsh's costly engagement of Mance's diversionary attack. Marsh, the Lord Steward and not a ranger, was badly wounded in the pyrrhic victory. Ser Alliser Thorne and Lord Janos Slynt, a known sympathizer of House Lannister, enemies of Jon Snow's parent House Stark, arrived along with the reinforcements. They took Jon Snow into custody with the knowledge that he had deserted and joined forces with the wildlings, either not believing or not caring about his orders from the Half-Hand to do just that.


New Beginnings and Peace

Assuming that Snow would be killed, Slynt dispatched him to treat with Mance and demand his surrender. It was at this meeting that Snow learned that Mance had in fact found the Horn of Winter and held back from its sounding only because of a fear that without the Wall standing nothing would stop the Others from following his people into the South.

It was only moments after Jon Snow entered Mance's tent that a force of Brothers from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and the armies of Stannis Baratheon descended on the Wildlings east flank. A screening force of the Night's Watch broke up the Wildling forces and then Stannis' armored horse smashed through their ranks. In the ensuing battle known as the Battle of Castle Black the entire Wildling force was either captured or routed with over a thousand Wildlings killed. Mance was captured and most of his lieutenants were killed or captured, with the exception of Tormund Giantsbane & The Weeper.

With King Stannis on the Wall, Mance in irons and the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch dead, along with most of the senior Brothers killed at the Fist or the Gap, the Watch was left in a precarious position of having to not only elect a new Lord Commander but also preserve their political neutrality. After a contested election between Lord Denys Mallister, commander of the Shadow Tower, Cotter Pyke, commander of East-Watch and Lord Janos Slynt, Jon Snow's name was placed as a compromise that both Mallister and Pyke could agree upon. The political maneuvers of Samwell Tarly securing Mallister's and Pyke's support (to prevent Janos Slynt, who both agreed would make a bad Lord Commander, from being voted in) and some fortunate election night events resulted in Jon Snow becoming the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Jon Snow attempts to make an alliance between the watch and the wildlings so they can fight there common enemy the Others.


998 Lord commander of the Night's Watch, Jon Snow, must have realized that if before The Night's Watch's strength was in-sufficient to hold the Wall, against the wildlings raiders, after the disaster at Battle of the Fist of First Men Night's Watch, was incapable of holding the Wall against the ever growing threats of the others.

Jon Snow mean to garrison all the abandoned way castles. restore patrols on the wall and establish a line of beacon towers along the top of the Wall, until they have more maesters and more birds.

Allowing thousands of wildlings north of the Wall.


Strength


References and Notes