Erebor: the great dwarf kingdom. What happened to it after the events of The Hobbit.

Erebor, or the Lonely Mountain, is one of the most memorable locations in Middle-earth. The great dwarven kingdom, famous for its wealth and its ups and downs, interested me as a child when I read The Hobbit. I also always wondered what happened to this kingdom after it was reclaimed from the dragon Smaug. I was especially interested in the question, what happened to Erebor during the war with Sauron? After all, Erebor could have been a powerful ally of the forces of good, yet nothing is heard of it at all in the Lord of the Rings movies. To find out, I decided to re-read first The Hobbit, and then the Lord of the Rings itself, and there I found all the clues. To begin with, I would like to briefly run through the events that led to the emergence and flourishing of the dwarf kingdom. Favor, it is quite young, and these events are not so much. Its founders were the descendants of the people of Durran, who were forced to flee from the kingdom of Moria because of the Balrog settled there. At first, however, the dwarves were not going to stay in Erebor for long, and soon moved to the Grey Mountains. But there their riches kept attracting dragons, with whom the dwarves fought many wars. Only after the death of the Dwarven King Dain did his people decide to leave the area. Some of them went to the Iron Hills, and some of them, led by Thror, Thorin Duboshield's grandfather, returned to Erebor. There, the dwarves quickly became rich, trading with the elves of Lycalesia and the Men of Dale. However, this wealth did not go unnoticed. The great dragon Smaug the Golden attacked the dwarves, drove them out of there, and settled in the Lonely Mountain himself. How he was eventually defeated is told in detail in the book The Hobbit, so I won't repeat myself. And now I'd rather tell about the fate of Erebor after these events. So, the Golden Dragon was defeated, the dwarves returned to Erebor, and their ruler became Dain II Ironclad, a descendant of the dwarves who went to the Iron Hills, a relative of Thorin Duboshield. This king revived the former might of the Dwarven Kingdom. The riches inherited from Smaug allowed it to be rebuilt, and a friendly alliance with humans and elves helped it prosper. But this continued until Sauron openly revealed himself and began the War of the Ring. He wanted to lure the people of Erebor and Dale to his side, as they would make powerful allies, but they refused. Sauron sent hordes of his cruel minions into the area, the Men of the East, the Easterlings. They defeated the armies of men and dwarves and drove them into Erebor, taking the mountain in a siege that lasted throughout the war. This is why Erebor could not help Gondor, Rohan or the elves in any way. Only with the defeat of Sauron did the defenders manage to break the encirclement and defeat the Easterlings, whose morale had plummeted after the death of their lord. After this, Erebor continued to grow richer and more powerful. It formed an alliance with the United Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, created by Aragorn, and continued to befriend the elves. Erebor even acquired something of a colony of its own, and here they were helped by our old acquaintance. The dwarf Gimli gathered a band of volunteers from Erebor and founded a Dwarven Kingdom in the caves of the White Mountains, in Helm's Fall. This kingdom probably became a vassal of Erebor and made it even more powerful. There is every reason to believe that in the following eras, Erebor became one of the greatest Dwarven kingdoms and now nothing threatened it.