Quote Originally Posted by gkathellar View Post
All of which makes a lot of practical sense when you consider that a raid's goals were often military aggression and/or extortion of a foreign state. In a modern context, you could liken it to one criminal organization performing a smash-and-grab on another's turf: aside from the immediate financial benefits, the action and the reaction will both have political ramifications that are probably part of the decision to attack in the first place.
yes, the other factor is raids are what they could do. The primacy of defense in the medieval era, and even pretty far into the Early Modern, meant that it was hard to capture well defended strong points. This meant there was a long lasting emphasis on soft(er) targets.

I think people tend to imagine, and in the case of Hollywood, portray raids as being more brutal than they often were. Often the goal was just to provision your army (soldiers need to eat, and horse fodder in particular was a major problem for cavalry forces) and maybe to drive off the 'enemy' population, which you can do just by stealing cattle - since without their cattle they have a hard time living.

But while we all know many stories of atrocities in pre-industrial warfare and especially raids, from reading the records I am often struck by how mild they are. Raids which were full-on massacres seem to stand out and cause surprise and consternation. More often they only steal some of the cattle and grain and leave the rest, precisely because they don't want the peasants driven off. In Central Europe and Italy when fighting neighbors they often seemed to almost play by certain rules, the rules of what the Germans called "Fehde" or private war. For example capturing and then paroling enemy soldiers and ransoming back captive civilians at relatively low rates.

I think because today's enemy or victim might be tomorrows victor, and turn about is fair play. Or today's enemy might be tomorrows ally when a much more dangerous enemy arrives from another region (the French army or the Mongol hordes for example)

G