Idiom Explanation:
A tactic to attack the enemy’s rear and force the attacking enemy to withdraw their forces.
Pronunciation:
围魏救赵
wéi wèi jiù zhào
Origin:
西汉·司马迁《史记·孙子吴起列传》：“夫解杂乱纠纷者不控拳，救斗者，不搏击，批亢捣虚，形格势禁，则自为解耳。”
Story:
During the Warring States period, there were two famous military men. One was called Sun Bin and the other was called Pang Juan. Both of them studied the art of war with the same teacher, and later they worked for the State of Wei together. Pang Juan was so jealous of Sun Bin’s military talent that he tried to frame him, causing Sun Bin to have his kneecaps cut off. Later, Sun Bin was secretly rescued to Qi by Qi’s general Tian Ji. Surrounding Wei to save Zhao is a war between Sun Bin and Pang Juan.
At that time, Wei took the lead in many vassal states to carry out political and military reform, and its state power was growing day by day, and it had annexed some weak vassal states. The vassal states that were comparable to Wei were Qi in the east and Qin in the west. Wei’s neighbors, Zhao and Wei, were relatively weak.
In 368 BC, Zhao, with the support of Qi, attacked Wei, a vassal state of Wei. King Huai of Wei sent his general Pang Juan with nearly 100,000 troops to besiege Handan, the capital of Zhao. Zhao had no choice but to ask Qi for help. Zou Ji, a minister of Qi, advocated not to save because it would deplete his country’s strength. However, Minister Duan Gan Lun thought that if Wei defeated Zhao, Wei would become more powerful and thus a threat to Qi, so he strongly advocated supporting Zhao.
King Wei of Qi took Duan Gan Lun’s suggestion and sent 80,000 troops to save Zhao with Tian Ji as the general and Sun Bin as the military advisor. After analyzing the situation, Sun Bin, who was the military advisor, thought that Wei’s army was very strong and if they fought head-on with Wei’s army, it would cause greater losses to Qi, so they should take advantage of the fact that Wei’s elite troops were outside and Wei’s capital, Daliang, was empty, and attacked its capital to force Wei’s army to return to save Daliang, so that the danger to Zhao would be naturally eliminated.
In order to gain strategic initiative, Sun Bin decided to create the illusion that Qi’s troops were weak to the enemy army. He deliberately sent incompetent officers with troops to attack Wei’s military town of Pingling, which resulted in a great defeat of Qi troops. Pang Juan, the general of Wei, thought that the Qi army was unbeatable, so he intensified his attack on Zhao, not thinking in the least that the Qi army would attack the capital of Wei, Daliang.
At the same time, Sun Bin personally led his elite troops into the capital of Wei, Daliang. When Pang Juan heard the news, he swiftly withdrew his troops from the front line of attacking Zhao and traveled a long distance to defend the capital. Because the soldiers were sleepy, and fell into Sun Bin’s encirclement, the Wei army was beaten to death. The idiom of “Attacking the Wei to relieve the Zhao” came from this.
Similar Idioms:
- 声东击西
