Stratagem No. 36 第三十六计 Desperate stratagems (败战计)
If all else fails, retreat
Literal
To retreat is the superior course.
When you cannot win, leave with the army still intact. That beats surrender, and it beats a peace that hands the victory over.
Source line
全师避敌。左次无咎，未失常也。
Traditional 全師避敵。左次無咎，未失常也。
Keep the army whole and avoid the enemy. He withdraws to the left. No blame. He has not left the constant way. This is the hexagram Shi (The Army).
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
The sentence is the Image on the fourth line of Shi (The Army), where a withdrawal — commentators take ‘the left’ as that side — carries no blame and has not left the normal rules of war. The book then ranks it above the other bad options: surrender is total defeat, a forced peace is half a defeat, and leaving is not yet a defeat.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
If all else fails, retreat means leaving while the army still exists, and treating that leaving as the best of the remaining choices. The English title sounds like an apology. The Chinese, and the old saying it comes from, is firmer: flight is the superior plan. The commentary does the arithmetic. When the enemy’s advantage is complete and you cannot fight, three doors remain. Surrender loses everything. A peace signed under that pressure loses half. A withdrawal loses the field and keeps the force. A force that still exists is a turn the war can still take.
The hexagram refuses to call this a disgrace. ‘He has not left the constant way’ means a withdrawal in good order is inside the art, not a collapse of it. The practical content is the order. Banners, a rear guard, a story for the pursuer, a road chosen before the panic: these are what make ‘retreat’ different from a rout. Stratagem 21, the cicada, is the ornate version, where a shell stays behind. This entry is the plain version, and the book places it last, in the chapter of desperate measures, because it is what you still have when the other thirty-five do not fit.
The story
Bi Zaiyu’s goats, and an older saying 悬羊击鼓
Mixed
The sentence is older than the book. In the Book of Southern Qi, in the biography of Wang Jingze, a cornered man throws it at a hostile court: Tan Gong’s thirty-six schemes, and flight is the best of them. Tan Gong is Tan Daoji, the Liu-Song general later remembered for bringing an army home. The saying, written down in the early sixth century, does not mean that Tan Daoji composed a manual, and it does not list thirty-six tricks. It means that a famous commander was already a byword for getting out. The anonymous text we now call the thirty-six stratagems, with these classical lines and this commentary, surfaces much later: a hand-copied book was printed in Chengdu in 1941.
The commentary’s picture of a good exit is a Song general, Bi Zaiyu, during the Kaixi war of 1206 against the Jurchen Jin. He judged that Jin numbers were growing past the point where he could meet them. One night he left. The banners stayed in the camp. He had live goats hung so that their front hooves rested on drums; the animals, unable to bear it, kicked, and the drums kept a pulse. Jin scouts heard a camp and saw flags. They held for days. When they understood, he was too far to catch. Luo Dajing tells it in the Helin yulu. It is a retreat that spent a little theatre to buy a clean road.
Surrender would have handed over the army. A peace signed that week would have handed over the result and kept the humiliation. Leaving kept a Song force in being, under a general who went on being useful. That is the commentary’s claim for calling flight the superior plan. It is not a mood and it is not a proverb about giving up. It is a ranking, made by people who had watched commanders die of pride on ground they should have left, and it is why the list ends here rather than on a victory.
The saying about Tan Daoji is in the Book of Southern Qi, in the biography of Wang Jingze, Bi Zaiyu’s goats and drums are in Luo Dajing’s Helin yulu while his campaigns are in the Song shi, and the thirty-six-item book itself was printed in Chengdu in 1941 with the compiler unknown.
Sources
- Xiao Zixian, Nan Qishu 南齐书, biography of Wang Jingze
- Luo Dajing, Helin yulu 鹤林玉露, on Bi Zaiyu
- Song shi 宋史, biography of Bi Zaiyu
Myth check
It is not a chapter of Sun Tzu and not a manual by Tan Daoji: the oldest form of the line is in the Book of Southern Qi, where Wang Jingze quotes Tan Gong’s thirty-six schemes, flight is the best, as a taunt, and Tan Daoji is the general being invoked. The thirty-six named stratagems, with this commentary, are a much later anonymous text printed in 1941, and the retreat here outranks surrender rather than serving as a slogan for giving up at the first check.
Modern application
A product, a case, or a posting that cannot be won is usually held out of pride, because leaving looks like the thing you will be blamed for. The commentary’s arithmetic still applies. Shutting it down cleanly, with the team, the cash, and the reputation intact, is a better result than a forced merger on the other side’s paper, and better than staying until nothing is left to carry out. The skill is the order of the exit: who is told, what is saved, what noise is left so the pursuit starts late.
Careers have the same three doors. Resigning in good order, with the work handed over and the story straight, keeps a future. A ‘peace’ that signs away credit and references, just to avoid the appearance of retreat, is the half-defeat. Waiting to be destroyed is the whole one. The hexagram’s point is that an orderly withdrawal is normal conduct, not a scandal.
Takeaways
- Leave while the team and the means still exist.
- Prefer a clean exit to a peace signed under pressure.
- Plan the rear guard before the announcement.
How to counter it
An opponent who leaves banners, routine, and noise behind may already be gone, so check the camp, the office, or the account before you besiege an empty ritual. If you are the pursuer, speed matters more than dignity once you know the drums are goats.
Questions
What does ‘retreat is the best stratagem’ mean?
It means that when you cannot win, leaving with your force intact outranks both surrender and a peace dictated by the winner. The commentary calls surrender a total defeat, a forced peace a half defeat, and withdrawal not yet a defeat, because a force that still exists can fight another day. The hexagram Shi says a withdrawal to the left carries no blame and does not break the normal rules.
Did Sun Tzu write the 36 stratagems?
No. The Art of War does not contain this list. The phrase ‘Tan Gong’s thirty-six schemes, flight is the best’ appears in the Book of Southern Qi, in the biography of Wang Jingze, and refers to the general Tan Daoji. It is a saying, not a table of contents. The anonymous book of thirty-six stratagems now read was printed from a hand copy in Chengdu in 1941.