The question is about the contemporary usage of the following distich:
For he that fights and runs away,
May live to fight another day ;
…and whether historical events and imprecision have upstaged its original meaning – which might have been about pragmatism – in contemporary english.
Demosthenes
Historically, this is attributed to Demosthenes, an epic Greek orator opposed to Alexander the Great; but it is not part of his oratory corpus. He is credited for the saying after the Battle of Chaeronea in 338BC where, according to notes, he deserted or did nothing admirable(yet not a bad tactic considering he died some 15 years later, in 322BC).
Willis's Current Notes article
Much later, in the 1854 Willis's Current Notes – a fabulous anthology piece – we are introduced to the surreal idea that a British newspaper printed a half page with a very similar saying to basically make fun of the behavior of Lord George Sackville at the Battle of Minden in 1760(wikipedia explains):
Ferdinand called for a British cavalry charge to complete the victory,
but Sackville withheld permission for their advance. Ferdinand sent
his order several times, but Sackville was estranged from Lord Granby,
the force commander. He continued to withhold permission for Granby to
gain glory through an attack.
He asked to be court-martialed to expose his innocence, but was rather made an example of in a surprisingly forceful manner. The author then discusses Rabelais, Shakespeare's Henry VIII(I, I, 206), and other tasty bits, and finishes his analysis of the sources with the work of Vice Admiral Sir John Mennes:
The distich in Butler's Hudibras:-
For those that fly may fight again,
Which he can never do that's slain,
is evidently a translation from Scarron; but the couplet,-
For he that fights and runs away,
May live to fight another day ;
was written by Sir John Mennes in ridicule of Sir John Suckling's expedition to Scotland, in 1641.
And references the work Musarum Deliciae and Censura Literaria which he can't find. This seems to be the same poem and indeed there's the cowardise idea but it's really about finding an excuse to stay in his tent, or staying at the rear ten miles aback, all tongue-in-cheek one could say; it's quite colorful but nothing formal like the couplet above. When you read it you wouldn't think Sir Mennes would say something as polite as that couplet about Sir Suckling. And indeed a note ("P. 96, 1. 5." ) from an editor seemingly echoes that observation. So if not Mennes then who coined this?
Q. From Willis's document it feels like in the 19th it was common knowledge that this was used in a derisive way, more than once, and in a striking fashion. Where does that leave us with the current usage? Is there any of that historical mocking connotation associated with using this today?
Best Answer
For he that fights and runs away, may live to fight another day
is primarily used to rationalize the benefit of behavior that was cowardly on it's face. There may be folks who use the phrase to mock that rationalization, and medica offered an excellent explanation of that use in another answer, but the primary meaning is:
"Better to retreat and marshal your forces than to waste a glorious death in sure defeat."
Being attributed to Demosthenes originally, as a rationalization of his desertion at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338BC, we would intuitively interpret that as the original meaning of the expression. It is quite commonly used in that way to this day.
In the 2008 book Soliloquy by Stephen Finn, the author tells of a time Errol Stephesn discussed a variant of that original phrase with his father:
In that quote, the father was teaching his son the benefit of giving the fight a chance before running away. By extension, he was conceding that once you know you can't win the battle, it might be better to back away from sure defeat.
Trumbull Park, by Frank London Brown contains a similar usage of the expression.
Trumbull Park was written for children, and the famous phrase was used to teach a simple ethic. Use your head to moderate your emotions.
In Bob Marley's popular reggae song The Heathen. We hear a call to "holy war":
He uses a dialectical alteration of the phrase, to encourage people who had fallen away from the fray earlier. Retreat may have been an option then, but not now.
Comparing He that runs away, lives to fight another day with the truncated variant, Live to fight another day.
NB: I haven't mastered the art of embedding Google Ngrams:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fights+and+runs+away%2C+live+to+fight+another+day&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfights%20and%20runs%20away%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Clive%20to%20fight%20another%20day%3B%2Cc0
Even though the first phrase in the expression tails off consistently from the 1930's, watching the charts track with each other before that seems to support the idiomatic connection between the longer expression and the more popular truncated form, "live to fight another day." That truncated expression's added nuance of "rationalizing defeat as a step toward victory", may explain its increasing popularity, but the sorter phrase is still used to rationalize the benefits of behavior that is cowardly on its face.
In 2003, Gabriel Stricker wrote Mao in the Boardroom: Marketing Genius from the Mind of the Master Guerilla [sic], a primer on competition for small companies, demonstrating how the phrase becomes the basis for guerrilla warfare. Positioning yourself for defeat is no strategy for victory, so find a position that leverages your advantages.
In the fashion of the original use of the phrase, Stricker advises smaller companies to "run away" from competitive situtations that guarantee defeat in order to engage in competition that promises success.