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It's usually called a feigned flight.

A feigned flight is when you attack someone, and in the middle of the fight, your troops start to run away. They act like they are fleeing because they are losing- however, it is "feigned" or "faked". The idea is to get the enemy troops to chase you. Then, when they are away from the rest of their army, your troops can stop running and turn around and start fighting again, or other troops (especially fast-moving ones like knights on horses) can come over and kill them. Additionally, when those troops leave the rest of the army, there is now a hole there where they were, and your other troops can rush in and take advantage of that.

When the Normans fought the Saxons at Hastings, the Saxons had their army in a line on the top of a hill. The Normans tried shooting at them, but the Saxons had large shields that could easily block most of the arrows. Then they tried attacking, but attacking up a hill is very difficult. So the Normans started using feigned flights to get parts of the Saxon army to chase them, which made it easier to fight them, and started making holes in the long Saxon line. Eventually the Normans were able to do this enough so that the Saxon army became weak and they could launch a full attack and win.

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11y ago

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