Sun Tzu in the field
The Art of War is a book of general principles. This section puts those principles beside things that actually happened: campaigns traced phase by phase, from the first march order to the last night, and then matched against the text chapter by chapter.
Every campaign here is checked against the historical record — the Zuo Zhuan, the Shiji, the Hanshu, the Sanguozhi — with the source named for every figure we quote. Where the record contradicts the book, we say so. Where the book explains nothing, we say that too. A page that says the Art of War predicted everything is not an analysis; it is a coincidence with a table of contents.
One caution worth stating up front. Only a small number of campaigns in this section can claim that Sun Tzu himself fought in them. The rest are later commanders — Han generals, Three Kingdoms warlords — who either applied the doctrine deliberately or whose victories the historians afterwards explained with it. Each page labels which of these it is.
The campaigns
Mobei Campaign
Two columns, more than two thousand li of desert, and an encirclement at dusk. The campaign that opened the Hexi Corridor was also the most expensive in Han history — and the general who won it reportedly thought the Art of War was a waste of time.
Battle of Boju
Wu crossed the Han River, fought Chu five times and sacked its capital. It is the campaign usually used to prove that Sun Tzu’s methods work. The earliest detailed account of it never mentions him.
Battle of Red Cliffs
Cao Cao took the six commanderies of Jing Province without a fight, and within months he had lost his fleet on the Yangtze to a feigned surrender and a fire attack. This page weighs the record: a well-executed plan, a warning that was ignored, an epidemic, and a south wind.
Doctrine index: which campaigns test which chapter
Start from a chapter of the text and find the campaigns that put it to the test. Every chapter that has a campaign attached links to its own summary as well.
How to read these pages
Phase by phase
Each page opens with the sequence of movement — the marches, the feints, the crossings and the waits, in the order they happened. This is the part most summaries leave out, and the part that decides most battles.
Verdicts, not endorsements
Every doctrine row carries a verdict: Textbook, Partial, Contrary, or Not in the text. Some rows show the text being followed exactly. Others show a commander doing the opposite and winning anyway.
Named sources
Figures are attributed to the source that gives them. Where two sources disagree — as they often do over march distances and casualty counts — we print both and mark the disagreement rather than picking the more dramatic one.