Defensive Feint Trap / Literature

• A Brother's Price, Jerin pulls this on some toddlers with whom he's playing toy soldiers. The oldest sister is very angry, but he manages to convince her that it is not cheating if you could do it with a real army.
• Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship. The barbarians of the planet Makassar lure the Temple guard knights into pursuing them by retreating, then turn and slaughter them.
• This happens quite a bit in Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Zhuge Liang was such a master of such traps that the one time his rival came across him sitting on top of a small fort-city playing calming music, gates wide open, and the streets empty except for a few janitors, the rival decided to back off in case of an ambush. (Turned out to be a Refuge in Audacity — Zhuge Liang didn't have the forces for a confrontation, so an attack really would have worked.)
• Used more than once in David Weber's Safehold during Siddarmark war against Church forces. Siddarmarkian pikeman has such a Badass Army opinion that the sheer sight of soldiers dropping their pikes and running is enough for other armies to forget carefullness. Then the "retreating" army leads them into the real trap. The fact that most of Church commanders are Too Dumb to Live helps, too — so far it was not employed against any really smart commanders.
• In the Dragonlance novels during the siege of the High Clerist's Tower during the War of the Lance the Draconians pulled this off on the overconfident Solamnic forces.
  • It doesn't help that the commander of the Solamnic Knights, was just a little bit crazy over having been beaten out for the position of Grand Master of the Knighthood. He decided to launch an attack away from the Tower's defenses in a case of Suicidal Overconfidence, hoping that a stunning rout would sway popular opinion back in his favor. And the garrison, bound to Honor Before Reason as they were, were duty-bound to follow, leaving only the tiny force of Knights of the Crown, who were under the command of Sturm Brightblade, who ordered them to remain behind, to defend the Tower.
  • Laurana, the Golden General, who takes command of the Solamnic forces after the High Clerist's Tower, returns the favor at the Battle of Margaard Ford. When faced with a massive enemy army that greatly outnumbers her own, she has her silver dragons create an ice dam to block the Vingaard River. Her ground forces then appear to flee in the face of the overwhelming Dragonarmy force. This causes the enemy army to heedlessly enter the now dry river bed in pursuit of her seemingly routed troops. Laurana then has her gold dragons melt the ice dam, creating a massive tidal wave that annihilates the entire Dragonarmy force without her forces taking any losses.
• Conqueror: Jochi does this to a group of Russian knights at the start of Bones of the Hills. This is subverted towards the end of the book when Kachiun tries this against Jelaudin. However, since Jelaudin is Genghis Khan's Worthy Opponent, he understands Mongol tactics and realises what they are trying. He thus quickly orders his men to stop their pursuit, forcing the Mongols (see Real Life, below) to deal with the shame of having actually retreated.
• Mars Attacks: The Mongols are using the alien invasion and destabilization of civilization to get their own back.
• The Warcraft's The War of the Ancients trilogy has the invading demon army use this tactic. Several times. And the overzealous army commander falls for it. Every time.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • In the the 5th book, General Mat has his pikemen encounter a large enemy force, attempt to run away, then set up an apparently hopeless defense when they are overtaken. As the enemy approaches without caution, expecting a Curb-Stomp Battle, that's when all the archers and cavalry pop out of hiding.
  • In the 11th book, General Mat uses a small group of mounted scouts to lure a legion of cavalry into a defensive position maned by crossbow men. Then, once they're committed, he hits the enemy from behind with his own cavalry. It's the only stand-up fight he offers during an incredibly successful guerrilla campaign, and he completely curb stomps the opposing force. It's also something of a False Flag Operation since he lures the enemy in by pretending to be a unit of Deathwatch Guards in the area—he's covering their withdrawal. Though he does fly his own banner in the end, subverting that as well.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Tywin Lannister fills one of his flanks with irregular troops, planning on the likelihood that they'll break and his stronger flank of knights can pin the enemy against a river. He even sticks his unwanted son Tyrion in there, probably hoping that he'll die in the fighting. The enemy's battle commander turns out to be too cautious to fall for the trick, and Tyrion's irregulars hold the flank anyway. Tywin still wins thanks to his superior numbers, just not decisively.
  • In the second book, Tyrion lets the enemy navy come in close, then he closes off the escape route before he proceeds to Kill It with Fire.
• The primary modus operandi of Salma's New Mercers in Shadows of the Apt.
• The Art of War: Sun Tzu made it clear of the importance of using the Feigned Retreat on enemies (and not falling for them yourself) through his book.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Happens more than once in the X-Wing Series, most notably at the start of Wraith Squadron. Talon Squadron follows a single wounded enemy fighter into a trap which kills everyone but Myn Donos.
  • Later used by Wedge himself in the New Jedi Order Enemy Lines duology. When the Vong stage a ground assault on his Borleias base, he instructs all his defenders to retreat at the same rate, reinforcing weakened areas while ordering the abandoning of more well defended positions. Then, once the Vong have been lured into open ground, the orbiting Star Destroyers open fire...
• The Dresden Files
  • A small-scale version in Dead Beat. Warden Captain Luccio is fighting the Corpsetaker sword-to-sword, and winning handily—in fact, she drives her back into an alley, runs the Corpsetaker through and leaves her for dead. Harry figures out shortly afterward that Corpsetaker threw the fight and let Luccio run her through, then switched bodies with her.
  • Harry pulls two himself in Skin Game
    • First, for much of the book, Harry feigns ignorance to one of Nicodemus' greatest weapons his fallen angel partner Anduriel can listen in through anything that casts a shadow. Harry further pretends to be weak with only one person on the heist team who is his ally, but in fact had gotten to one mercenary before Nicodemus could and paid him to pretend to not be Harry's ally on the mission until it was time to take down Nicodemus' plans.
    • Then against Lasciel-possessed Hannah Ascher. After redirecting two attacks, he suddenly drops on his knee, seemingly weakened, and raises his shield, prompting his enemy into a third attack, as they both knew his shield won't last long. It, however, serves two different purposes: to distract Hannah from that Harry used her own Hellfire surge to melt the ceiling directly above her, and to protect against the resulting lava and hot rocks shower which buried both Hannah and Lasciel's coin.
• Gordon R. Dickson's Tactics of Mistake: The title comes from the hero's tactical doctrine, which calls for a series of feints that gradually draw the enemy into an untenable position, at which point he attacks, and demolishes them.
• NATO forces use this against a Soviet advance in Red Storm Rising. It works, but the Soviets have enough firepower to plow through later anyway.
• The MacKenzies use this in the Emberverse against a charge of PPA knights, who are lured into the attack by the illusion that there are fewer archers than in truth there are. The incompetent temporary leader has them take 75% losses in the charge, then has the nerve to claim victory because the MacKenzies left afterward. His commanding officer doesn't take it well.
• The Reynard Cycle: Drauglir crushes Nobel's numerically superior army with one of these in The Baron of Maleperduys.
  • Faelas lures Reynard into one of these in Defender of the Crown. Unfortunately, Reynard saw it coming and he ends up riding into one himself.
• In the World War series, the early atom bombs are too heavy to air-drop, and in any case, the Lizard anti-aircraft capabilities make using aircraft anywhere near the front lines a bad idea. So how do you deliver one? Hide it in a building, have the army get "driven back" a few miles, and set it off.
• In The Wheel of Time, Galad does this in a Trial by Combat against Eamon Valda. He pretends to be more tired than he really is, even taking some cuts that he could have blocked, so that when the other man's guard is down, he attacks so swiftly that it's unexpected.
• A variant in The Malloreon — during a desert battle, the Murgos flee from the Malloreon army, luring them into pursuit, and leaving the Malloreon wagon train (with all their water supplies) unguarded. Then a Murgo cavalry unit swoops in and chops up every single water barrel before the Malloreons can reverse, and the "fleeing" Murgos settle into prepared positions for some archery practice as well.
• In Elite, the second book of Mercedes Lackey's Hunter series, main character Joy is used as bait to lure monsters into ambushes more than once.
• Martín Fierro: This is a Narrative Poem about Martin Fierro, a Gaucho who is Press-Ganged into Conscription trying to Settling the Frontier. At song III, the Conscripted Gauchos, without any military training, chase for the Indians after yet another of their incursions on the Frontier. The Gauchos always chase the Indians, who have better horses and always escape. Only this time, the Indians were hiding behind some hill and they come back and charge against the Gauchos. Cue a Curb-Stomp Battle where the Gauchos end literally Chased by Angry Natives. The irony here is that the Indians applied military tactics better than the Gauchos!
• The Dark Elf Trilogy: This is Drizzt's assumption in his first grand melee; a fellow student attacks with tactics so rudimentary he assumes it's a ruse, feigning incompetence to put Drizzt off of his guard. However, he quickly realizes that's not the case, and he really is significantly more skilled than his peers.
• Used in the Dutch young-adult trilogy about the The Hundred Years War from Thea Beckman by the real world Bertrand du Guesclin. Faced with an army on an easily defendable hill, Bertrand's army begins its advance, but panics and routs immediately as the first arrows land and pile up as they try to flee across the bridge behind them. The enemy army can't resist the temptation to wipe out the disorganized mess below them and charge down, whereupon Bertrand's army immediately reforms to have the battle right where he wanted, on the the level plain below the hill.