هزم الأمير الجند
The commander defeated the army.
The commander is presented as the agent of the defeat, although the actual military action may be performed by soldiers and multiple causes. Attributing a collective achievement to the directing commander belongs to the broader study of rhetorical attribution.
However, it would be careless to declare every such sentence figurative regardless of context: ordinary language regularly assigns a military result to its commander. The analyst must distinguish the context, the nature of causal agency, and established conventions of attribution.