Without local guides, your enemy employs the land as a weapon against you.
He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
The line between disorder and order lies in logistics.
To maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.
If I am able to determine the enemy's dispositions while at the same time I conceal my own, then I can concentrate and he must divide.
Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.