Looting , combined with poor military discipline , has occasionally been an army 's downfall - troops who have dispersed to ransack an area may become vulnerable to counter-attack . In other cases , for example the Wahhabi sack of Karbala in 1801 or 1802 , loot has financed further victories . Not all looters in wartime are conquerors ; the looting of Vistula Land by the retreating Imperial Russian Army in 1915 was among the factors sapping the loyalty of Poles to the Russian Emperor . Local civilians can also take advantage of a breakdown of order to loot public and private property , as in events which took place at the National Museum of Iraq in the course of the Iraq War in 2003 . Tolstoy 's novel '' War and Peace '' describes widespread looting by Moscow 's citizens before Napoleon 's troops entered the city in 1812 , and by French troops elsewhere
Wahhabi sack of Karbala
Wahhabi sack of Karbala
Looting