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In 204 BCE, General Han Xing led 30,000 new recruits into hostile terrain to fight an enemy six times their size. His victory was one of a series of successful campaigns that led to the establishment of the Han dynasty. At the time Han Xing knew that he couldn't quite rely on the newbie soldiers. He needed a way to governize his troops so that every one of them would fight for his own life. And because he was fighting in enemy territory, he had to do it quickly before his supply route was cut. He sent 2,000 cavalrymen on a secret mission and then ordered his men to set up camp next to a river. His enemy laughed at his choice of location because the accepted strategy at the time strongly advised against staying too close to a river. When Han Xing started his attack, his forces were soon pushed back, even though his opponent had unleashed merely half of their strength. Han Xing's soldiers fled the battlefield, abandoning valuables, food and weapons along the way. The enemy soldiers broke ranks to collect the booty. Meanwhile Han Xing's soldiers arrived at the riverside camp and realized there was nowhere to run or hide. They fell into a tough defensive line because it was the only way they'd survive. The enemy courted the other half of their troops hoping to break the stalemate. It was then that Han Xing's hidden cavalrymen rolled into the enemy encampment and replaced all of the enemy's flags with their own. The enemy, seeing as their base had been overrun, lost the will to fight and was decimated by Han Xing's forces, which attacked them from both sides. This victory, along with many others, made Han Xing one of the best commanders in history. In this story, Han Xing demonstrated exceptional prowess at military command. Some of the decisions he made could serve as textbook examples for Xunzi's theories. The arrangement of the main force and the cavalrymen, for instance, perfectly demonstrated the idea of Ji and Zhong, a flexible strategy matched with a strong defense. The main force and the cavalrymen could switch roles depending on how things developed on the battlefield. A clearer perspective, however, is revealed about the state of mind of the soldiers. Here Han Xing was fully aware of the limits of his fledgling soldiers, so he created a situation where they had to fight if they were to survive. With retreat no longer an option, the poorly trained soldiers became a force to be reckoned with. Sun Zi also studied the state of mind of soldiers. He noticed that they tend to grow stronger in solidarity as they venture deeper into enemy territory. When they are surrounded, they offer an obstinate resistance. When they are given no choice, they put up the toughest of fights. Any moments of desperation, they take to orders like thunder follows lightning. But this practice of driving the soldiers to the verge of desperation appears to challenge everything Sun Zi laid out in previous chapters. What happened to the cautious master of strategies who advocated flexible tactics based on a solid defense? If soldiers in dire straits can somehow gain a stunning boost in morale and achieve victory against impossible odds, why bother convening pre-war council meetings, comparing strengths and weaknesses, drafting war plans, and carefully training the troops? Does this mean that the best approach might be to lead one's soldiers straight to the enemy base and let them wreak as much havoc as possible? Well, no, it doesn't work that way. The history of war is full of amateurish commanders who, feeling inspired from reading just a few pages of a strategy book, intentionally put their forces into harm's way, hoping that this would provide them with enough motivation to fight until they prevailed. More often than not, the results were not what they expected. This approach is like doubling down on a lottery where the rewards were desertion, mutiny, or total annihilation. This is largely because they missed out on an essential ingredient. Sun Zi pointed out that simply throwing away the cooking pots and burying the chariot wheels in an attempt to show off one's determination to fight to the end is an exercising futility unless the army is properly managed. In the well-trained army, both the strong and the weak are equally valiant and each part of the army has to work together as if they were a person's arms and limbs. Successful military management requires both trust in the commander and fear for the discipline. Fear for the discipline is easy to achieve, but trust is not so easy to come by. Indeed, Sun Zi warned that gaining trust needs to come before the discipline. If you punish the soldiers before you have their trust, they will not be subordinate and you won't be able to effectively command them. Many generals go the extra mile to win the trust of their soldiers. The general and reformist politician Wu Chi in the 5th to 4th century BCE ate, slept and fought side by side with the rank and file. At one point he even sucked the pus from the festering wounds of a common soldier. When the mother of that soldier heard this, she wept. People thought she was moved to tears by the general's kindness, but she said, I am weeping for my son. Not long ago General Wu sucked on the wound of my husband. As a result, that simple wit fought hard and died for him on the battlefield. Now the general is being so nice to my son, I bet the poor kid will end up fighting and dying for the general just like his father. There's nothing I can do, save cry for my son who is already lost to me. There is a certain level of hypocrisy in Sun Tzu's management theories, which have been followed by many other generals in history. On the one hand, he stressed the importance of commanders winning the trust of their troops. On the other hand, he wanted commanders to be cloak and dagger about their strategies. Different segments of the troops must be given separate orders and none of them is supposed to know the whole picture of the strategy. In fact, Sun Tzu went so far as to suggest that a commander should keep his officers and soldiers in the dark, vary their tactics and move from one campground to another so that no one catches on to their real intentions. We still see a similar practice of compartmentalization by secretive organizations in TV dramas. But exactly how effective it is against modern spies and the big data analysis tools, that's a question Sun Tzu didn't have to worry about. Speaking of spies, we come very close to the end of the Art of War. In the last two chapters, Sun Tzu talked about attacking by fire and the use of spies. So next up, we'll see how these special tactics played a role in the history of war.