This is a standard military tactic, called a "Feigned Retreat". Infantry today learn drills to break contact when at a disadvantage and get back into the fight under better conditions. Basically, anytime two units were facing off, and one could move faster than the other, this tactic was something to be wary of.
Ancient
- An accidental version during the Battle of Plataea
: Pausanias, the Greek commander, and his army had started forming a defensive line on the field, but some skirmishes convinced them to retreat to higher terrains. However, their retreat maneuver was so awkward that their army broke down in several uncoordinated masses, which from away looked like they were disbanding. Believing the Greeks were running away, the Persian general Mardonius charged carelessly with all his forces in an attempt to finish them, a decision that naturally became a Mass "Oh, Crap!" when they discovered the Greeks were simply repositioning and not forfeiting the battle. - The Carthaginians under the command of Hamilcar and Hannibal practiced this. The most notable example would be the Battle of Cannae, in which the Romans pushed back Hannibal's center only to be surrounded by the enemy wings and absolutely crushed. (Cannae is still basic material in officer schools today.)
- The reason for that is because it is a tactic that anyone can easily fall for. Ironically, if the Romans simply tried to cut through rather than fight defensively, they could have broken out (in fact, a small group of legionaries managed to do exactly this once they recognized what was going on) Chances are it would have still failed, but the Carthaginians would not have won nearly as decisively. Either that, or the Romans could have captured or killed Hannibal, turning it into a Pyrrhic Victory. Also, Hannibal had a numerically inferior force, so he was able to surround and destroy the Romans despite having far less men. This was because most of the Romans at any given time were useless: if you don't have any form of projectile weapon, being trapped in the middle of a position means you can't contribute anything to the fight except waiting for the people between you and the enemy to die so you can get your turn.
- The Carthaginians might have been inspired by their Lusitanian mercenaries, for whom the whole "turn and fight" strategies were usual, or Lusitanians might have learned this from the Barca family. Viriathus and his people made a great usage of this during the Lusitanian Wars.
- Horse Archers throughout history used a variation of this: once the enemy starts to pursue and break formation, the riders turn around on their horses and perform a Rain of Arrows while still retreating. This was called the Parthian shot, after the Persian tribes that pretty much Wrote the Book on using cavalry archers in a feigned retreat.
Medieval
- The Mongols excelled at it, to the degree that even armies of people that had faced and been beaten by the tactic still fell for it.
- The Islamic armies during the Crusades also excelled in it—and the Muslim armies of the Mamluk Sultanate actually managed to pull it off against the Mongols at Marj al-Saffar.
- An accidental one of these is what basically won the Battle of Hastings for William the Conqueror. Harold's forces had a strong position at the top of a hill, and William's plan to remove them had failed because Harold's shield wall was too strong and well disciplined. The battle devolved into vicious hand-to-hand fighting at the shield wall until a unit of Williams, nearly destroyed, turned and ran down the hill. Nearby units (realizing that their flank was now open to attack) turned and ran too. Some of Harold's forces gave chase and in the following melee, the battle completely changed face. Harold's forces who gave chase were essentially butchered, leaving a hole in his lines. William regrouped and attacked again, only this time the now weakened shield wall faltered and he won the battle.
- The Shimazu Clan used this tactic to terrific effect many times during the Sengoku Jidai, more than once utterly destroying armies that had them outnumbered more than 10-to-1. It worked for them because, unlike most other clan armies of the time, they were a united force rather than a collection of various lesser daimyo's forces. They were also far more pragmatic than many other samurai, who saw even a pretended retreat as disgraceful.
- El Cid Campeador used a false retreat to make the Moor garrison of Castejón sortie and pursue him, only for him to turn back and destroy them.
- Carried out three times by the Vietnamese, across three dynasties, against Chinese forces. note The formula for success:
- Step 1: Plant big wooden posts with wickedly sharp metal tips at the bottom of the Bach Dang river.
- Step 2: Send small, light Viet boats out to attack and taunt the bigger Chinese ones.
- Step 3: Pretend to retreat and lure the enemy past the booby-trapped stretch of the river.
- Step 4: Once they've gotten sufficiently far away, break out the big ships and firepower, and give the Chinese a beatdown.
- Step 5: The Chinese ships get back to the trap area and promptly get wrecked by the wickedly sharp posts, now visible and in range of doing grievous harm because of the low tide.
- Step 6: Profit!
Early modern
- Being familiar with the French army's cultural obssession with heavy cavalry charges, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba attracted them to his fortified positions in Cerignola with a light cavalry skirmish and let them crash against his arquebusiers and pikemen, who promptly mowed down the French.
- Almost happened to the Spanish Armada. If it hadn't been for a sharp-eyed pilot on their flagship, the English would have lured the Armada onto the Owers Bank, a dangerous reef in the English Channel.
- Native American tribes were pretty good at it, and they got better when they got horses from the Spaniards.
- The Americans at the Battle of Cowpens attempted and failed to use this tactic, then succeeded in using it later on by accident. The Americans were in 3 lines. The first two lines were to fire and retreat to the 3rd line, in order to tempt the British to charge in headlong for the kill. This trap didn't quite work, and resulted in a stalemate. When the British hit the third line, it buckled and fell back, prompting the British to charge for real. The American line halted, about faced, and fired at point-blank range into the British, with a bayonet charge as a follow-up. The battle ended quickly after that.
- At Cowpens, one reason for this tactic was simply because the American commander expected the militia to run and therefore asked them to just get off a round or two before retreating. Behind the militia was a river and a line of Continental and State troops to keep the militia from running too far. Once the militiamen broke contact, friendly Dragoons rounded them up and regrouped them as a new rear line (this being one of the traditional roles of mounted units). The Continentals were well trained enough to recover from a temporary reverse in the manner described. This battle ended up being the basis for the climactic battle in the movie The Patriot (2000).
- Another reason this tactic worked was the fact that the American line was in an orderly retreat, rather than a disorganzied rout, and were reloading on the move. Under those particular circumstances, halting and reversing the line again was simply a matter of issuing the orders.
- Happened by accident in a battle during The American Revolution, in which one of Benedict Arnold's commanders misunderstood an order and marched double time away from the British. The Redcoats pursued, thinking they were being routed. Arnold went to his commander and asked why they were fleeing the field, to which the commander replied "Does this look like we're fleeing?" Arnold realized he had a great opportunity and he ordered the men to stop, turn, and charge the Redcoats. It turned into a complete victory.
- Wellington's famous "reverse slope" tactic during the Battle of Waterloo was a variation of this. Also, his retreat to the Lines of Torres Vedras in 1810, luring the French Army of Portugal into an unwinnable situation, where they eventually had to choose between retreat or starvation.
- Napoleon did the feigning weakness version at The Battle of Austerlitz, allowing his Austrian and Russian enemies to take the high ground before luring them off of it by deliberately weakening his right wing. It worked, allowing an attack up the centre to cut the allied Austro-Russian army in half.
Modern
- Borderline example from World War I: at Caporetto, the Italian army was routed and demoralized, but when the pursuing Austro-Hungarians managed to make contact again, they discovered that the new Italian commander in chief had managed to regroup his troops and motivate them with fear of what the invaders could do to their families, transforming an actual rout into a trap.
- The same battle also features a full example, prepared months earlier by the previous commander in case the near-collapsing Austro-Hungarian forces managed to rout his army on the plains. When that happened, the First Army, deployed on the mountains of the northern border, retreated from their positions, that were about to be bypassed and cut off, to the Grappa massif, where secure supply lines and a ludicrous amount of artillery made short work of the Austro-Hungarian mountain troops, who were practically blasted off the mountains.
- Caporetto itself has a failed example of this trope. Pietro Badoglio, commander of the XXVII Corps, anticipated the Austro-Hungarians to try and break through at the conjunction of his forces with the IV Corps at the Tolmino bend, and, with orders from II Army command to prepare for a counteroffensive and from the supreme command to retreat on more defensible positions before the enemy attack, deployed his artillery to shell the enemy the moment they arrived there-and instructed them to not open fire without his signal. The trap should have devastated that part of the Austro-Hungarian offensive and made their victory far more costly than it was worth (the main offensive being further north at Plezzo and completely successful), but Badoglio moved back to his headquarters and was cut off, as the enemy preparatory shelling cut his phone line, flags and light signals could not be seen due the mist (very common in autumn, especially on the shores of a river in the mountain-exactly where they were), and sound signals could not be heard due the enemy artillery fire. The Austro-Hungarians broke through at Tolmino, and discovered the trap when they captured the cannons intact.
- Used on a small scale towards the end of the Gallipoli campaign. The Commonwealth forces would go completely silent in their trenches, then mow down the Ottoman soldiers when they came to investigate. This was done repeatedly, not to inflict casualties, but to make the Ottomans wary of approaching seemingly abandoned allied lines. Shortly thereafter, the Allied soldiers slipped out of their lines and evacuated by ship.
- The Hindenburg Line was the German army using this tactic en-masse. It involved their army on the Western front retreating to more build up defensive lines behind them. These lines themselves embodied the tactic as the forward positions of the line were only lightly defended, and were to be abandoned in a serious attack, after which the British and/or French would try to "exploit their breakthrough" by advancing into the far more heavily defended lines behind it, now conveniently out of range of the artillery that had been positioned to shell the front of the line. It managed to inflict some heavy losses on Entente offensives, until they learned to halt the advance after taking the first line.
- A Real Life subversion: Operation Fortitude was a dis-information campaign that the Allies used in World War II to get Germany to believe that they were greater in numbers (Germany believed there were 90 Allied divisions in England, when there were only 44) and were poised to attack other locations. The result: Hitler believed that Normandy was just a Defensive Feint Trap to draw fire away from Pas de Calais, where more divisions were waiting. Of course, what Hitler didn't know was that the troops there were just balloon tanks and Hollywood sets. It helped that General Patton was supposedly in charge of the US forces heading for Calais — really an offensive feint trap.
- The best part is that this is the second time the British had pulled this on the Germans. After the British and American armies kicked Erwin Rommel and company out of North Africa, the obvious next step was to sail across the Mediterranean and invade Europe from the south. In order to cover the invasion, Operation Mincemeat was devised by Royal Naval Intelligence (including a contribution from the real-life inspiration for Q) to fake a plane crash off the southern coast of Spain and use a submarine to float a body dressed as a Royal Marine officer toward the shore. There, it was picked up by Spanish authorities, who allowed German agents to examine it. The body carried letters to British commanders warning that invading Sicily (the closest point to North Africa and stepping-stone to invading Italy) would be too obvious a move, and that Sardinia or Greece should be invaded instead. The German and Italian forces thus had to split their numbers to cover multiple locations, leaving Sicily undermanned. Operation Husky, the airborne and amphibious invasion of Sicily, commenced on 9 July 1943, and by 17 August the island was secure.
- In the last few months of World War II, Hitler led his inner circle to believe that all German operations were a massive defensive feint trap. He said they would lure the enemy in, then obliterate them with his new "wonder weapons" and vast reserves. Of course, this was all a delusion. The little markers for those divisions and weapons were still on his map. He was delusional in believing that they actually existed.
- A favorite tactic of Erwin Rommel during the Battle of France and the North African campaign when faced with incoming armored assault. Rommel would order his Panzers to retreat, drawing the Allied armor into range of his 88mm AA gun emplacements, the power of which could disable virtually any allied tanks fielded at the time due to its high calibre and muzzle velocity. This was actually a necessary tactic in multiple battles since those 88mm guns were the only things he had that were powerful enough to actually penetrate the heavy frontal armor of the British Matilda II's and Churchills. The weak 37 and 50 mm guns that most German tanks were mounting at that point in the war were completely ineffective.
- The Finns in the Winter War.
- The Israelis in the Golan Heights pulled off a series of these during the Yom Kippur War.
Other
- A well-known variation is to use nature as a Defensive Feint Trap. If the defender has no points that it absolutely needs to defend, or it can trust that such points are strong enough to last through an entire campaigning season; and if the area hasn't enough forage to sustain the invader, it is commonly used. The invader has to maintain a long supply line draining off garrisons for outposts and escorts for convoys (which are often subject to partisan attacks when this kind of strategy is used). The effect is similar to that of a Risk player who advances until he has no army left. Examples of such strategy include the Byzantine Empire on several occasions, the Americans during The American Revolution, the Spaniards in The Napoleonic Wars and, most famously, Russia in The Napoleonic Wars and World War II.
- A particularly shining example of that were Russians letting the French have Moscow in 1812. Napoleon's troops marched into the city, and Russian guerrillas set Moscow on fire from all directions. Soon the French survivors of the fire were saddled with a half-burned, non-defensible husk of a city and a humanitarian catastrophe.
- In general, heavy cavalry would be taught never to chase light cavalry if it broke away. Heavy cavalry was essentially invulnerable against light cavalry, if the numbers were close, unless it broke that one rule — because speed was the only major advantage light cavalry had. The moment heavy cavalry gave chase, it would be flanked, and cut to ribbons. Most heavy cavalry were smart enough to break off the charge, but only if they could see it and had enough room to do so. One of the reasons the light cavalry tactic was so effective was the difficulty of stopping roughly two-thousand pounds of flesh and steel in time. It still took well-trained light cavalry to pull it off though, as they had to time it right or risk either losing the chance, or getting rolled over.
- A well-done retreat will very likely include a number of these as a routine-even if someone is really retreating, he wants to slow the pursuit down and discourage it.
- This is the strategy behind Muhammad Ali's famed "rope-a-dope" tactic. Used to perfection in the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, Ali essentially backed up against the ropes (meaning he didn't have to waste as much energy standing as he otherwise would have) and absorbed crushing body blows from the much more powerful Foreman for several rounds. Once Foreman had tired himself out, Ali unleashed everything he had on Foreman, who was too exhausted to defend himself, knocking him out in the eighth round.
