Q: Who are the five armies in the Hobbit?

Okay, so I just finished re-reading The Hobbit. I'm a slight
bit confused on the battle of five armies at the end. It seems
to me that there are six potential armies involved:

1. Humans from the lake town.
2. Elves from Mirkwood
3. Dwarfs from the Iron Mountains
4. Goblins (Orcs)
5. Wolves (Wrags)
6. Eagles

I certainly don't think that Tolkien just made an error and
counted wrong here, so I don't think all those armies are
supposed to be seperate ones. I see a few possibilities
for 'contracting' the armies down to five:

A. Eagles aren't technically an army, their air force, so
they don't count. It's five armies plus an air force, but
that title is way too long for a battle, so they just shorten
it to 5 armies battle. (Least likely to be the case I think.)

B. The Human and Elves count as one combined army.
Either one was very big, and neither one initially set
out to do battle in a large force expecting to find only
a handful of Dwarfs plus a Hobbit to contend with.
Due to their smallish numbers, only combined were
they worthy of being called an army. (More likely
than A, but still not what I think is the case.)

C. The Wolves and Goblins count as one army. While
the Wolves are certainly an assest to the Goblins, they
aren't a major part of the battle. Alone they would
certainly not be numerous enough to be considered
a seperate army. (Most likely in my opinion.)

Has Tolkien ever commented on this question? If so,
what did he say? If not, what is everyone else's thoughts
on the matter?

Chris

Quoth "All the News" in article
:
 > Okay, so I just finished re-reading The Hobbit. I'm a slight
 > bit confused on the battle of five armies at the end. It seems
 > to me that there are six potential armies involved:

We had a discussion of this point last September, and I think the best
answer comes from the introductory comments to the battle in _The
Hobbit_ itself:

"So began a battle that none had expected; and it was called the
Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible. Upon one side
were the Goblins and the Wild Wolves, and upon the other were Elves
and Men and Dwarves."

So it looks like Tolkien didn't count the Eagles as an "army" (nor the
bats, who were there from the start and probably played as much of a
role as the Eagles did, nor Beorn who almost counted as an army by
himself, nor separating the two independent groups of Dwarves). I
think that earlier thread pretty firmly settled on this answer, though
I'd welcome corrections to that impression from others who remember
it.
    Steuard Jensen