軍爭

軍爭 (contention of armies) refers to the competitive maneuvering between opposing forces to seize advantageous positions before battle is joined. It is not 'battle' itself but the strategic race for positional advantage.

迂直之計 (the strategy of the indirect approach): literally 'the calculation of the circuitous and the direct.' The concept is that the skilled commander takes an apparently longer route but arrives first, converting a disadvantage into an advantage. This anticipates Liddell Hart's 'indirect approach' by two millennia.

交和而舍: 'to face the enemy at the border and encamp.' 和 here refers to the border gate (和門) between the two forces. Some commentators read 交和 as the two armies drawing up opposite each other.

三軍 (three armies/divisions): the standard Zhou-era army organization divided forces into upper (上軍), middle (中軍), and lower (下軍) divisions. A full-strength 三軍 fielded approximately 37,500 men.

倍道兼行 (double-marching): covering two days' march in one. A normal day's march for an ancient Chinese army was approximately 30 li (roughly 15 km). Double-marching thus meant about 60 li per day.

輜重 (supply train): heavy baggage, equipment, and provisions transported by cart. Abandoning it (委軍) meant sending a fast detachment ahead while the baggage followed slowly — gaining speed but risking the supplies.

其法十一而至 (one in ten arrives): this arithmetic illustrates the attrition of a forced march. At 100 li, 90% of the force drops out from exhaustion. Sunzi's point is that the longer the race for advantage, the more fragmented the army becomes on arrival.

鄉導 (local guides): people native to the area who know the roads, water sources, and terrain. This is one of Sunzi's recurring themes — intelligence from those with local knowledge is indispensable.

風林火山 (Wind, Forest, Fire, Mountain): these four similes became the most iconic passage in East Asian military thought. The Sengoku-era Japanese warlord Takeda Shingen (1521-1573) famously emblazoned them on his war banner (孫子四如之旗). The full passage contains six similes, adding 'inscrutable as shadow, sudden as thunder,' but the four-character abbreviation became standard.

兵以詐立 (war is founded on deception): 詐 means 'stratagem' or 'artifice.' This echoes and summarizes the thesis of Chapter 1: 兵者，詭道也 (war is the way of deception).

懸權而動 (weigh the balance before moving): 懸權 literally means 'to suspend a weight on a scale' — to calculate and judge the situation carefully before committing to action.

《軍政》(Military Governance) is a lost military text that Sunzi quotes. Nothing survives of it beyond the fragments cited here and elsewhere in pre-Qin literature. It may have been a Zhou-dynasty military manual.

金 (metal) refers to bronze gongs and bells used to signal retreat or halt, while 鼓 (drums) signaled the advance. These auditory signals were essential for coordinating forces on pre-modern battlefields where the noise of combat drowned out spoken commands.

一民之耳目 (unify the eyes and ears of the people): 'people' (民) here means the common soldiers. The principle is that signal systems replace individual judgment with unified command — no soldier acts on his own initiative but only on the signal.

奪氣 (break the morale): 奪 means 'to seize away' or 'rob.' The metaphor is that the enemy's fighting spirit (氣) is something that can be stolen from him through timing and psychological pressure.

朝氣銳，晝氣惰，暮氣歸 (morning keen, midday sluggish, evening homeward): this observation about the daily rhythm of fighting spirit became a standard principle in Chinese military thought. Cao Cao's commentary links it to the Battle of Changshao (684 BC), where the state of Lu defeated Qi by waiting for the enemy's drumming — and thus morale — to fade.

The four categories — 治氣 (controlling morale), 治心 (controlling mind), 治力 (controlling strength), 治變 (controlling adaptation) — form a systematic framework. 治 means 'to govern' or 'to manage,' implying that these are disciplines the commander cultivates, not one-time tactics.

正正之旗 (banners in perfect order) and 堂堂之陣 (grand and imposing formations): doubled characters indicate superlative degree. The point is to avoid engaging an enemy at peak readiness — the mirror image of 'strike when morale flags.'

圍師必闕 (when surrounding, leave a gap): one of Sunzi's most cited maxims. A completely encircled enemy fights with the courage of desperation (死地). Leaving an apparent escape route causes the enemy to think of flight rather than fighting to the death, making them easier to defeat in the pursuit.

窮寇勿迫 (do not press a cornered enemy): closely related to the previous principle. A desperate enemy with no hope of survival will fight far beyond normal capacity. The shrewd commander gives the enemy a reason to run rather than die fighting.

佯北勿從 (do not pursue a feigned retreat): 北 here is used in its military sense of 'defeat/retreat' (敗北), not 'north.' A feigned retreat (佯北) was a standard tactic to lure pursuers into an ambush.

餌兵勿食 (do not take the bait): 餌 means 'bait' as in a lure. The 'bait troops' (餌兵) are a small detachment left exposed to tempt the enemy into attacking, drawing them into an unfavorable position.