Make the enemy reveal his formation while concealing your own. Then your forces stay united while the enemy’s are divided.
Concentrate your troops as one, while splitting the enemy’s into ten parts. Thus you attack one segment with tenfold strength.
With your numbers greater and the enemy’s fewer, you fight only against a small fraction of their army.
Note
A great military strategist and thinker in ancient China, who lived in the late Spring and Autumn Period. He authored The Art of War, the world’s earliest and most influential military classic. His strategic thoughts have been widely applied in military, politics and management worldwide.
Reveal enemy’s formation
Detect the enemy’s deployment and movements.
Conceal one’s own formation
Hide troop arrangement to keep the enemy in the dark.
Concentrate & divide
Core tactics – unite your forces and disperse the enemy’s troops.
Fight with superior numbers
Create local numerical advantage to defeat the enemy easily.
Sun Tzu’s Winning Strategy Proven in the Battle of Baima
1. Core Military Wisdom: I Concentrate, While the Enemy Divides
In this chapter, Sun Wu put forward an irreplaceable core combat principle: I concentrate my troops, while dividing the enemy’s forces.
The essence of this tactic is clear. When two armies confront each other on the battlefield, never fight a war with overall inferior strength. Instead, we need to create absolute local superiority to guarantee victory. There are two core prerequisites to achieve this goal: gather all our troops into one tight, powerful striking force without dispersion; meanwhile, take active tactical moves to split the enemy’s army into scattered small units, and the more fragmented the enemy forces are, the better.
Sun Tzu emphasized this strategy to the extreme. Ideally, one unified elite unit of our army defeats ten separate enemy detachments. Even if we are weaker in total military strength nationwide, we can still win decisive battles by gathering troops to form overwhelming numerical advantages on partial battlefields, making our troops superior and enemy troops sparse.
2. The Core Secret: Hide Our True Combat Intentions
Readers may ask: what is the key to concentrating our own troops and splitting the enemy’s forces successfully?
The answer lies in completely hiding our real offensive intention. If the enemy cannot judge our exact attack direction, they have to deploy garrisons everywhere to guard all possible dangerous points. Forced by uncertain battlefield information, the enemy will inevitably divide their troops passively. On the contrary, once our attack target is exposed, the enemy will gather all troops to defend the key position, and our whole strategy will fail completely.
This is exactly the famous military maxim summarized by Sun Wu: Expose the enemy’s troop deployment, while keeping our own deployment invisible.
It is necessary to correct a common misunderstanding here. “Keeping our own deployment invisible” never means hiding all our soldiers completely, which is impossible in actual large-scale wars. It refers to hiding the commander’s real operational purpose. We can show partial troop movements to confuse the enemy, but we must never let rivals see through our final strike target.
3. Battle Background: The Fierce Confrontation Before Guandu Campaign
The perfect historical case to interpret this ancient military wisdom is the Battle of Baima, a crucial preliminary battle of the famous Battle of Guandu during the Three Kingdoms period. All detailed records of this battle are collected in Records of the Three Kingdoms · Annals of Emperor Wu written by Chen Shou, authoritative official history of the Three Kingdoms.
In 200 AD, Yuan Shao occupied four wealthy northern provinces and commanded the most powerful army in northern China. He planned to lead his army across the Yellow River to eliminate Cao Cao and seize full control of the Central Plains.
Yuan Shao stationed his main army in Liyang on the northern bank of the Yellow River, directly facing Baima Ford, a vital military ferry defended by Cao Cao’s troops on the southern bank. Soon after, Yuan Shao dispatched his top general Yan Liang to lead a large army to besiege Baima. The city was tightly surrounded, putting Cao Cao in an extremely dangerous situation.
If Baima, this critical forward military outpost, fell into enemy hands, Yuan Shao’s massive army could march south unimpeded and directly threaten Cao Cao’s core territory. Facing the strong northern army, Cao Cao was anxious and intended to send reinforcements to rescue Baima directly.
4. Xun You’s Brilliant Stratagem: Split Yuan Shao’s Troops with a Feint Attack
At this critical moment, Cao Cao’s core advisor Xun You stopped the hasty rescue operation. He analyzed the battlefield situation clearly and pointed out the core dilemma: Cao Cao’s total troops were far fewer than Yuan Shao’s, so direct head-on rescue would fall into Yuan Shao’s trap and suffer heavy losses. The only way to win was to disperse Yuan Shao’s unified main force first.
As recorded in the original text of Records of the Three Kingdoms, Xun You advised Cao Cao:
“Our troops are outmatched by the enemy. We must disperse their military momentum. March to Yanjin and pretend to cross the Yellow River to attack Yuan Shao’s rear. Yuan Shao will definitely move his main army west to defend. Then we can send elite light cavalry to raid Baima by surprise”.
Following Xun You’s plan, Cao Cao sent a partial army to launch a fake attack on Yanjin Ford, dozens of kilometers west of Baima. This false military movement created a huge illusion for Yuan Shao: Cao Cao intended to cross the Yellow River from the west, detour to the rear of Liyang, and flank his main army.
Worried about being attacked from both front and rear, Yuan Shao fell for the trick immediately. He ordered all his elite main forces to move westward to defend Yanjin. Originally, Yuan Shao’s troops deployed along the north-south riverbank, supporting each other closely with concentrated strength. After this large-scale westward transfer, his unified army was completely divided, falling into scattered defense.
5. Lightning Surprise Strike: Lift the Siege of Baima in One Battle
The moment Yuan Shao’s main army marched west and left Baima defenseless, Cao Cao launched a rapid counterattack without any delay. He commanded a crack light cavalry to march rapidly from Yanjin to Baima.
Caught completely off guard, General Yan Liang had no time to arrange defense. Cao Cao dispatched Zhang Liao and Guan Yu as vanguard generals to charge the enemy formation. According to official historical records, Guan Yu spotted Yan Liang’s command banner directly among thousands of enemy soldiers. He rode his horse straight into the enemy army, beheaded Yan Liang in the battlefield, and returned safely without any obstruction.
With their commander killed instantly, Yuan Shao’s besieging army collapsed completely. Cao Cao successfully lifted the siege of Baima with minimal troop casualties.
6. Battle Review: The Perfect Practice of Sun Tzu’s Military Theory
Looking back on the whole Battle of Baima, Cao Cao won not by more soldiers or stronger weapons, but by thoroughly following Sun Tzu’s wisdom of concentrating our own troops and dividing the enemy’s forces.
- First, Cao Cao hid his real intention of rescuing Baima, confusing Yuan Shao with a feint attack and forcing the enemy to divide their main troops passively.
- Second, after the enemy’s strength was scattered, Cao Cao gathered all elite cavalry to launch a concentrated strike on the weakest point of the enemy, forming an absolute local advantage instantly.
This ancient battle proves a timeless military truth: overall strength never decides the final result of a war. The winner is always the side that can control battlefield information, hide real intentions, gather its own strength and split the enemy’s deployment. More than two thousand years ago, Sun Tzu’s subtle military wisdom still guides all confrontations and competitions today.
故形人而我無形，則我專而敵分，我專為一，敵分為十，是以十攻其一也。則我眾而敵寡，能以眾擊寡，則我之所與戰者，約矣。
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