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擒贼擒王 (qin2 zei2 qin2 wang2) - To beat the enemy army, capture their leader first
By Zhang Ciyun |
November 2, 2008, Sunday
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The title of this stratagem is borrowed from a line by Du Fu, a famous poet of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). The line reads: "To shoot the man on horseback, shoot his horse first; To seize the bandits, capture their leader first."
There's another saying to the same effect: to kill a snake, hit the seventh inch, meaning to break the most fragile vertebra of the reptile.
All these mean that if you want to beat the enemy, hit them in their most fatal part.
If their leader is captured, the enemy forces will lose direction and be thrown into chaos. This is an effective way to defeat your enemies.
Zhang Xun, a military commander of the Tang Dynasty, knew very well how to apply this stratagem.
In 756 AD, Zhang's town was under siege by an army led by the rebel leader Yin Ziqi. The rebel army was very strong and they repeatedly launched offensives against the defending troops.
Zhang decided that to defeat the rebel army, he had to kill their leader Yin Ziqi first. But neither he nor his troops had ever seen the rebel leader. To find out his identity, Zhang set up a trap.
He ordered his troops to gradually replace their real arrows with substitutes made of corn straw. The enemy thought the defending troops had run out of ammunition.
They rushed to report this to their leader, who was riding a horse at the rear.
Zhang and his troops immediately targeted Yin and when he came forward to the town gate to find out what was really happening, the defending archers used real arrows to shoot him.
One arrow pierced the leader's left eye and he fled the battlefield helter-skelter. Seeing this, his troops dispersed immediately and ran away in great confusion.
The siege was lifted and the strong rebel army was repelled thanks to one arrow that pierced the eye of the rebel leader.
However, some strategists warn that this scheme is most effective when it is used against a troop that has no great royalty to their leader. Otherwise, after their leader is killed or captured, his troops may fight on with a vengeance. It's true that no stratagem is applicable in all situations.
There's another saying to the same effect: to kill a snake, hit the seventh inch, meaning to break the most fragile vertebra of the reptile.
All these mean that if you want to beat the enemy, hit them in their most fatal part.
If their leader is captured, the enemy forces will lose direction and be thrown into chaos. This is an effective way to defeat your enemies.
Zhang Xun, a military commander of the Tang Dynasty, knew very well how to apply this stratagem.
In 756 AD, Zhang's town was under siege by an army led by the rebel leader Yin Ziqi. The rebel army was very strong and they repeatedly launched offensives against the defending troops.
Zhang decided that to defeat the rebel army, he had to kill their leader Yin Ziqi first. But neither he nor his troops had ever seen the rebel leader. To find out his identity, Zhang set up a trap.
He ordered his troops to gradually replace their real arrows with substitutes made of corn straw. The enemy thought the defending troops had run out of ammunition.
They rushed to report this to their leader, who was riding a horse at the rear.
Zhang and his troops immediately targeted Yin and when he came forward to the town gate to find out what was really happening, the defending archers used real arrows to shoot him.
One arrow pierced the leader's left eye and he fled the battlefield helter-skelter. Seeing this, his troops dispersed immediately and ran away in great confusion.
The siege was lifted and the strong rebel army was repelled thanks to one arrow that pierced the eye of the rebel leader.
However, some strategists warn that this scheme is most effective when it is used against a troop that has no great royalty to their leader. Otherwise, after their leader is killed or captured, his troops may fight on with a vengeance. It's true that no stratagem is applicable in all situations.
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