Stratagem No. 16 第十六计 Attacking stratagems (攻战计)
To capture, first let it go
Literal
Wishing to capture, deliberately release.
Stay close enough that a beaten opponent cannot regroup, and loose enough that they do not turn and fight to the death.
Source line
逼则反兵；走则减势。紧随勿迫。累其气力，消其斗志，散而后擒，兵不血刃。需，有孚，光。
Traditional 逼則反兵；走則減勢。緊隨勿迫。累其氣力，消其鬥志，散而后擒，兵不血刃。需，有孚，光。
Press them and they turn and fight. Let them go and their force drains away. Follow closely. Do not crowd them. Wear down their strength, thin their will to fight, and capture them once they scatter, without bloodying the blades. This is the hexagram Xu (Waiting): with sincerity, there is brilliance.
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
The hexagram Xu (Waiting) pictures holding back with confidence rather than forcing the moment. The line’s release is not a pardon and not a gap in the pursuit. It is a slackening of pressure so that a desperate enemy does not coalesce into a last stand. You remain in contact the whole time.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
To capture, first let it go means loosening the pressure on a beaten opponent so that they break apart, while you stay near enough to gather them when they do. A cornered force fights harder than its numbers deserve, because every person in it is fighting for a way out. Give them the sense of a way out, and the cohesion goes. Some run, some bargain, some stop obeying. That is the moment of capture, and the manual claims it can happen with little killing. The release is a controlled slack, not an open door.
The commentary is stricter than the proverb. Letting go, it says, does not mean setting them free. It means following, with the grip eased. The old rule about not pressing a desperate bandit is the same idea: you do not stop following, you stop crowding. Then the commentary turns on its own famous example. Zhuge Liang’s repeated releases of Meng Huo, it says, were about territory and about using one leader to bring others over. They were not the correct method for a battle. In a straight fight, a person you have caught should not be released again.
The story
Zhuge Liang’s southern campaign, 225 七擒孟获
Mixed
In 225, two years after Liu Bei’s death, Zhuge Liang campaigned south into Nanzhong, where local leaders had risen as Shu struggled to settle the succession. Chen Shou’s Records of the Three Kingdoms register the expedition and its result: the region was pacified, and Zhuge Liang returned to the business of the state. The biography does not describe a series of captures and releases, and it does not make a romance out of the march.
The story that carries this stratagem is later, though not as late as the novel. Pei Songzhi’s commentary to the Records quotes Xi Zuochi’s Han Jin Chunqiu: Zhuge Liang captured a local leader named Meng Huo seven times and released him seven times, until Meng Huo submitted and said he would not rebel again. Historians still argue about how much of Meng Huo is a person and how much is a tradition gathered under a name. What the stratagem manual does with the tale is as important as the tale. It says the seven releases were aimed at land, and at using Meng Huo to quiet the other southern peoples. As battle method, the manual rejects them.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a fourteenth-century novel, builds a long cycle of exotic battles on this frame. Those episodes are fiction. The usable part of the stratagem is the classical line, which does not require seven of anything. Do not press a beaten force into a last stand. Follow. Leave them room to lose formation. Take them when they scatter. Waiting, the hexagram says, is not the same as letting go.
The 225 campaign is in Chen Shou’s Sanguozhi; the seven releases come from Xi Zuochi, quoted by Pei Songzhi, and the novel expands them freely.
Sources
- Chen Shou, Records of the Three Kingdoms 三国志, biography of Zhuge Liang 诸葛亮传
- Pei Songzhi’s commentary, quoting Xi Zuochi, Han Jin Chunqiu 汉晋春秋
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三国演义 (novel, 14th century)
Myth check
The seven captures of Meng Huo are not in Chen Shou’s biography of Zhuge Liang. They enter the record through Xi Zuochi, as quoted by Pei Songzhi, and they become a spectacle only in the novel. The stratagem manual itself says that, as pure battle method, a captive should not be released.
Modern application
A negotiation that has already been won on the main point often fails in the last hour, because the winner keeps pressing small humiliations and the loser discovers a reason to fight again. Letting go, in the manual’s sense, means closing cleanly, leaving the other side a way to explain the outcome to their own people, and staying close enough that the agreement is actually signed. A victory statement that leaves them nothing is how settled deals return to the table.
The same shape appears when a stronger competitor has a weaker one on the edge of leaving a market. Forcing a public collapse can create a lawsuit, a regulator, or a desperate alliance. Allowing a quiet exit, while you occupy the customers and the staff who are already looking for a new home, takes the ground with less breakage. The manual’s warning still applies. This is a way of finishing a beaten position, not a reason to release an opponent who is intact and will use the pause to recover.
Takeaways
- Do not crowd a beaten opponent into a last stand.
- Follow closely while you loosen the pressure.
- Take them when they scatter. Do not call a pause a strategy.
How to counter it
If a stronger party suddenly gives you room, do not mistake the room for safety. Use it to leave in order, not to rally in the open, and assume they are still within reach.
Questions
What does to capture, first let it go mean?
It means easing pressure on a beaten opponent so they do not turn and fight to the death, while you follow closely and capture them once they lose formation. The classical line points to the hexagram Xu, Waiting. The release is a slack grip, not freedom. Press them and they cohere. Give them the sense of a way out and they scatter.
Did Zhuge Liang release Meng Huo seven times?
Chen Shou records a southern campaign in 225 and a pacification, not seven releases. Pei Songzhi’s commentary quotes Xi Zuochi’s Han Jin Chunqiu for the seven captures and seven releases of Meng Huo. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms expands that notice into fiction. The stratagem manual retells the story and then says it is not proper battle method.