This chapter explores the British sack of stormed towns from the perspective of Wellington’s command. Throughout his career, Wellington was not always consistent in how he dealt with sacks. He learnt lessons in India, but seemingly those lessons had to be learnt again in Spain. From Wellington’s perspective, the challenge was to manage and contain sack rather than prevent it entirely, something that he considered nigh on impossible. Given the centuries long tradition of plundering stormed towns, the chaotic circumstances of storming operations, and the prevailing articles of war, Wellington had only a very limited capacity to control the behaviour of his troops once beyond the breaches. Still, during the Peninsular War, as had been the case in India, a clear trend emerges: Wellington made progressively greater efforts to prevent or minimise sack plunder, with the growing encroachment of the military justice system into the space of sack itself. Moreover, Wellington cared about the welfare of civilians within besieged and stormed towns: it was not the breakdown of troop discipline alone that concerned him about sack – there was a humanity at play, too, as guarded and infrequently expressed as it was, in this most demonstrably unsentimental of soldiers.

This book is the first major study of British soldiers’ violence and restraint towards enemy combatants and civilians in the siege warfare of the Napoleonic era. Using British soldiers’ letters, diaries and memoirs, Gavin Daly compares and contrasts military practices and attitudes across sieges spanning three continents, from the Peninsular War in Spain, to India and South America. He focuses on siege rituals and laws of war, storm and sack of towns. The book challenges conventional understandings of the place and nature of sieges in the Napoleonic Wars. It encourages a rethinking of the notorious reputations of the British sacks of this period, and their place within the long-term history of customary laws of war and siege violence. Storm and Sack reveals a multi-faceted story of not only rage, enmity, plunder and atrocity but also of mercy, honour, humanity and moral outrage.

This book is the first major study of British soldiers’ violence and restraint towards enemy combatants and civilians in the siege warfare of the Napoleonic era. Using British soldiers’ letters, diaries and memoirs, Gavin Daly compares and contrasts military practices and attitudes across sieges spanning three continents, from the Peninsular War in Spain, to India and South America. He focuses on siege rituals and laws of war, storm and sack of towns. The book challenges conventional understandings of the place and nature of sieges in the Napoleonic Wars. It encourages a rethinking of the notorious reputations of the British sacks of this period, and their place within the long-term history of customary laws of war and siege violence. Storm and Sack reveals a multi-faceted story of not only rage, enmity, plunder and atrocity but also of mercy, honour, humanity and moral outrage.

At the heart of most sacks – in terms of motivation, behaviour and the broad participation of common soldiers – lay plunder. This chapter explores British sack plunder in the Napoleonic era from multiple perspectives: the broad campaign and siege contexts in which it occurred; the dynamics and rituals of plunder on the ground; and the attitudes and practices of officers. Most British rank and file participated in the plunder of stormed towns, borne of customary right, the catharsis of passing through the breaches, and opportunism. Despite the seeming chaos, this plunder had its own distinct rituals, conventions and carnivalesque dimensions. Some officers were complicit, too, in tolerating plunder, or indulging themselves; and in India, given the traditions of Company plunder and profit-taking, officers were only too eager to enjoy the official spoils of distributed prize. Yet, whilst there was a general resignation that it was next to impossible to prevent the plunder of stormed towns, most officers, and some men from the ranks, were highly critical of troops doing so, on military and moral grounds, drawing particular attention to the drunkenness, destruction and violence that accompanied it.

After the violent murders of the emperor Valentinian (March 16, 455) and his senatorial successor, Petronius Maximus (May 31, 455), in a series of coups, the Vandals occupied and then systematically plundered the city. Yet Roman elites – senators, contenders for the imperial throne, and military leaders – marshalled the will and resources after 455 to restore the city. Within a decade, Rome had reconstituted its government, with a stronger senatorial and military presence but a weakened imperial presence. Papal response after 455 focused on restoring clergy and church property.

This chapter examines the role of the army in the evacuation of East Prussia’s civilian population. It discusses the effects of combatants’ proximity to their own civilians, showing that the failure to evacuate civilians from areas of operations was a deliberate choice made between the Party and the Wehrmacht. During the first months of East Prussia’s defence, the impetus behind ‘evacuation’ was not the safeguarding of the province’s population but the removal of property. As with earlier on the Eastern Front, orders were issued to ensure that military and civilian materiel was broken down, evacuated, paralysed, or destroyed, a policy whose effects would be felt well into the post-war years. Once the Soviet offensives commenced in January 1945, military concerns immediately gained the upper hand and concern for civilians was no longer a priority. Trains and ships were prioritised for ammunition and the wounded, while roads were cleared of refugees to allow the army unrestricted movement. By mid-March, any evacuation was halted and 100,000 civilians found themselves in Königsberg as the final Soviet storming commenced. These high numbers did not encourage the fortress command to surrender prematurely, ensuring that the civilian death toll reached the tens of thousands.

Depictions of violence were ubiquitous in sixteenth-century Europe and drew freely on biblical and classical sources, as well as stories of Christian martyrdom. The new media of print and printmaking dramatically increased the number of such images, while pamphlets and broadsheets ensured their widespread circulation and deployment in the service of propaganda and the reporting of sensational crimes and disasters. The outbreak of polemic and conflict associated with the Reformation also provided new markets for the visualising of violence. The fascination with soldiers and war was driven by developments in arms technology and the desire of princely patrons to emulate the valour of the ancients. Whereas battle scenes in the first half of the century were largely conventional, the outbreak of confessional wars in the second brought images of gruesome violence, wholesale destruction and massacre, in which cities and the countryside were laid waste. While the use of violence for confessional propaganda never disappeared, the cruelty, desolation and terrible miseries endured by populations at the hands of ravaging soldiers during the Dutch Revolt and the Thirty Years War gradually became the object of fierce critique by artists in the early seventeenth century, drawing parallels with Spanish savagery in the Americas.