Historia. The Biography of marquis of Huaiyin records such a story:
In 204 BC, Han Xin led tens of thousands of Han troops to attack the Zhao state in the east. Zhao Wang Xie and the general Chen Yu hurriedly mobilized 200,000 troops and gathered at Jingxingkou to resist. The road to Jingxing is an extremely narrow mountain road with dangerous terrain. In order to win the victory of this battle, Han Xin made full preparations and careful arrangements in advance. One day in October, the Han army entered the Jingxing Narrow Road and camped about thirty miles from the mouth of the Jingxing. In the middle of the night, Han Xin sent an order to select two thousand cavalrymen, and gave each of them a Han army flag, telling them to sneak up the hill from the trail and then hide in the jungle.
After Han Xin sent away two thousand cavalry, he sent another 10,000 men as the vanguard of the army, with their backs to the mian river, and set up a position. When General Zhao Jun saw it from a distance, he couldn't help but smile. They laughed at Han Xin's naïveté and ignorance, and even laid out the "backwater array" that was taboo in the art of war.
After dawn, Han Xin ordered the main general's banner to be raised and opened the Jingxing Narrow Road with great fanfare. Seeing this, the Zhao army opened its camp and rushed out to attack the Han army. The two sides fought for a long time and were very fierce. According to the plan in advance, Han Xin abandoned the flag war drum, pretended to be defeated, and ran back to the riverside position. The Zhao army was like a hungry tiger and a sheep, competing for the banner of the Han army and chasing the Han army. Han Xin and more than 10,000 soldiers retreated to the river with no roads, only "backwater-fighting" and desperately resisting
In the face of the han army's desperate struggle, the Zhao army could not win, so it had to retreat back to the camp. But they retreated to the side of their barracks, only to see that it was covered with the red flags of the Han army. It turned out that the two thousand light horses sent by Han Xin rushed into the Zhao camp at once when the Zhao army was rushing out to chase the Han army, and effortlessly "pulled out the Zhao banner and established the Han red banner." When the Zhao soldiers saw that the camp had been occupied by the Han army, they were terrified and fled everywhere, even if the generals shouted and threatened and killed the soldiers, they could not stop the collapse. Finally, under the front and rear attacks of the Han army, the Zhao army was completely destroyed. Chen Yu was killed and King Zhao was captured alive.
After the victory of the battle, the generals came to congratulate them. After the congratulations were completed, someone asked Han Xin: "In the art of war, it is said, 'The marching formation should be on the right side and the back of the mountain, and the front and left sides should be facing the water', but today you asked us to line up behind the water, saying that after defeating the Zhao army, we would come to dinner, and we were not convinced at that time." Now that you have actually won the battle, what is this tactic? Han Xin replied, "This is a matter of martial arts, but you didn't pay attention to it." The art of war does not mean that 'put soldiers at the critical juncture of life and death, in order to fight hard and survive from death', I am putting soldiers in a difficult situation where there is no way to retreat, and let them fight desperately, so they win the battle. "All the generals listened
Later, people said that "pulling out Zhao Zhi, Li Han Chi Zhi" was "pulling out Zhao Zhi and Changing Banner", and the metaphor replaced it, and summarized this story as "a battle against the water", a metaphor for a decisive battle- a death battle.
