行軍

相敵 (reading the enemy): 相 means 'to observe and assess.' This chapter's subject is twofold: how to position your own forces (處軍), and how to read signs of the enemy's condition and intentions (相敵).

視生處高 (face the sunlit side, camp high): 生 (life/growth) here refers to the yang (south-facing) side of terrain where there is sunlight, warmth, and dry ground — conditions that promote health and morale.

半濟而擊 (strike when half-crossed): attacking an enemy while fording a river — when his forces are split between both banks and those in the water cannot fight — became a canonical tactical principle. The most famous application was the Battle of the Bi River (泓水之戰, 638 BC), where Song Xianggong refused to attack Chu while crossing and was decisively defeated.

The Yellow Emperor (黃帝) defeating the Four Emperors is a mythological reference. Traditional accounts say Huangdi fought and conquered rival tribal leaders — Yandi (炎帝) and Chiyou (蚩尤) among them. Sunzi invokes this to give his principles the authority of primal antiquity.

前死後生 (deadly ground in front, living ground behind): 'deadly ground' (死) means low, exposed ground facing the enemy; 'living ground' (生) means high ground with supplies and escape routes at the rear.

貴陽而賤陰 (prize yang, shun yin): beyond the cosmological overtones, this is practical advice. South-facing slopes (陽) receive more sunlight, dry faster after rain, and promote troop health. North-facing slopes (陰) are damp, cold, and prone to disease.

軍無百疾 (the army free of a hundred diseases): disease was by far the greatest killer in ancient armies. Sunzi's insistence on high, dry, sunlit ground reflects an empirical understanding that camp conditions directly determined casualty rates, often more than combat itself.

水沫 (foaming water): indicates flash flooding from upstream rainfall. The warning is against crossing a river when the current is suddenly swollen — the danger is being swept away mid-crossing.

The 'six calamitous terrains' — 絕澗 (steep ravines), 天井 (natural wells/confined hollows), 天牢 (natural prisons/enclosed basins), 天羅 (natural nets/tangled ground), 天陷 (natural traps/quagmires), 天隙 (natural crevasses) — are all named with the prefix 天 (heaven/natural), emphasizing that these are formations created by nature that function as traps. Each restricts movement and makes an army vulnerable.

伏奸 (hidden treachery): ambush parties and enemy scouts. 奸 can mean 'spy,' 'scout,' or any covert enemy element. The principle is that any terrain feature offering concealment must be searched — dense vegetation is the natural hiding place for ambush forces.

This passage is the longest sustained section of tactical observation in the Sunzi. It catalogs visual and behavioral indicators (what modern intelligence doctrine calls 'indicators and warnings') that reveal the enemy's true condition. The section functions as a field manual for reading the battlefield.

粟馬肉食 (feed grain to the horses and slaughter animals for meat): in normal operations, horses grazed and draft animals were preserved. Feeding horses grain from stores and butchering the animals that hauled supplies meant the army had abandoned any thought of sustained campaign — it was consuming all its reserves for one last effort.

軍無懸缻 (the army does not hang up its cooking pots): 缻 (fǒu) is an earthenware vessel. When an army stopped to camp, the standard procedure was to hang pots and cook. Not doing so indicates the army has no intention of staying — or no hope of another meal.

諄諄翕翕 (earnest and halting): 諄諄 means 'repeatedly, earnestly' — the commander pleads with his men. 翕翕 suggests murmuring or speaking in hushed, confidential tones. Together they paint a picture of a leader who has lost authority and must beg rather than command.

先暴而後畏其衆者 (first brutal, then fearful of his own men): this describes a commander who lacks judgment — he begins by imposing excessive punishments, alienating his troops, then realizes the army may mutiny and becomes timid. 不精之至也 (the height of incompetence): 精 here means 'skilled' or 'discerning.'

無武進 (do not advance recklessly): 武進 means advancing through brute force without forethought. The character 武 here does not mean 'martial' in a positive sense but implies rash, aggressive action without calculation.

取人 (win men): this can mean 'win people over' (earn the soldiers' trust) or 'overcome the enemy.' Most commentators take it as winning the loyalty of one's own troops, which fits the context of the following section on discipline.

令之以文，齊之以武 (command with civil virtue, align with martial discipline): 文 and 武 form the classic Chinese complementary pair — the civil/cultural and the martial/coercive. A commander must first earn loyalty through fair treatment (文), then maintain order through consistent discipline (武). Neither alone suffices.

與衆相得 (mutual trust between commander and men): 相得 literally means 'to get along with each other.' The chapter ends on a strikingly humanistic note for a military manual: effectiveness rests not on fear but on a genuine bond of trust between leader and soldiers, built through consistent and fair command.

This closing section echoes the Confucian ideal of governance through virtue backed by law. Sunzi does not advocate harshness or leniency alone but their careful balance — a theme that resonates with the Legalist-Confucian synthesis that would later characterize Chinese political thought.