Stratagem No. 15 第十五计 Attacking stratagems (攻战计)
Lure the tiger from its mountain
Literal
Lure the tiger off the mountain.
Do not fight a strong opponent on the ground that makes them strong. Draw them off it, and fight there.
Source line
待天以困之，用人以诱之，往蹇来连。
Traditional 待天以困之，用人以誘之，往蹇來連。
Wait for circumstances to hamper them. Use men to lure them. Going meets obstruction; coming finds connection.
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
The last clause is a line of the hexagram Jian (Obstruction): going forward meets trouble, while coming back finds a link. Attacking the tiger on its mountain is the going. Inducing it to leave, or slipping through once it has scattered, is the coming. Heaven in the line means circumstances you wait for. Men are the lure you arrange.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Lure the tiger from its mountain means refusing battle on the ground where the opponent is strongest, and inducing them to leave it. The mountain may be a pass, a fortress, a home market, a legal jurisdiction or a subject they know better than you. On that ground their numbers count double. Off it, they are only their numbers. The classical line splits the work in two. You wait for weather, supply, politics or time to make their position uncomfortable, and you use people, a bait, a rumour, a prize, to draw them out.
The commentary quotes the old caution that the worst policy is to attack a fortified city, and adds a sharper condition. An enemy who holds good ground, and who still has a commander and a large force, will not come for a small bait, and will not be beaten by a trick alone. You need the circumstances and the lure together. A tiger that likes its mountain, and can eat there, stays. The method fails into a frontal assault the moment they decline to move and you attack them anyway.
The story
Yu Xu on the road to Wudu, 115
History
In 115, during the Eastern Han wars with the Qiang, Empress Dowager Deng appointed Yu Xu grand administrator of Wudu. The Book of the Later Han says several thousand Qiang blocked him in the gorge country between Chencang and the Yao valley. That pass was the mountain. Yu Xu had a long road still ahead of him, a small column, and no good reason to break a defended defile head-on.
He halted, and he let it be known that he had written to ask for more troops and would not move until they arrived. The Qiang, hearing this, split to plunder the neighbouring counties. The block on the road thinned. Yu Xu then marched day and night, more than a hundred li in a day by the biography’s account. He ordered each man to build two cooking fires, and to double the number every day. The pursuers read the growing fires as evidence that relief had joined him, and they would not close.
An officer asked why he had reversed Sun Bin, who reduced his fires to look weak. Yu Xu’s answer, as the history gives it, was that the situations were different. Sun Bin had wanted a chase. Yu Xu, outnumbered, wanted to prevent one. Slow marching would have let the Qiang catch him. Speed kept him unreadable, and the fires made the unreadable look strong. He got through to Wudu. The lure was the false wait for reinforcements, which moved the Qiang off the pass they actually held. The fires were a second device, for the pursuit.
Told in Fan Ye’s Hou Hanshu, biography of Yu Xu; the appointment to Wudu is dated to 115, and the fire-count is the biography’s account.
Sources
- Fan Ye, Hou Hanshu 后汉书, biography of Yu Xu 虞诩
Myth check
This is not a general word for any ambush. An ambush can be laid on the mountain itself. The stratagem requires the opponent to leave the position that favours them. Yu Xu’s pass in 115 is the commentary’s example; Sun Bin’s reduced fires are a different trick, which Yu Xu himself contrasted with his own.
Modern application
An incumbent is a tiger on a mountain when the fight stays inside their distribution, their software, their home court or their regulation. A challenger who accepts that surface is attacking the pass. The lure is anything that makes the incumbent’s best people and cash leave that surface: a new region, a public controversy, a customer they feel they must personally save. You do not need them to be foolish. You need the prize, or the threat, to be one their position forces them to answer.
This version is useful when you are the smaller party trying to get past, rather than the party trying to destroy. Sometimes the aim is transit, not battle. A false impression that you are stuck, followed by speed once they disperse, is enough. Doubling the fires is optional. What is not optional is the reason they leave. If they can ignore you and keep the pass, your announcement that you are waiting is only true.
Takeaways
- Do not attack a strong position on the ground that makes it strong.
- Give them a reason their own situation forces them to leave it.
- Once they scatter, move faster than their picture of you allows.
How to counter it
When a weaker party suddenly stops and announces that they are waiting, check the other roads before you disperse to forage. The announcement may be the lure that empties your pass.
Questions
What does lure the tiger from its mountain mean?
It means drawing a strong opponent off the ground that makes them strong, then fighting, or slipping past, somewhere else. The classical line says to wait for circumstances to hamper them and to use men to lure them. In 115 Yu Xu, blocked by Qiang fighters in a gorge, announced that he was waiting for reinforcements. They scattered to plunder, and he marched through.
Why did Yu Xu increase his cooking fires?
The Hou Hanshu says each soldier built two fires, doubled daily, so pursuers would think relief had arrived. Yu Xu contrasted this with Sun Bin, who reduced fires to look weak and invite a chase. Yu Xu was outnumbered and needed to look strong. The fires covered the pursuit. The lure that cleared the pass was the false wait for troops.