The answer is best exemplified by Sherman's March to the Sea, one of the biggest campaigns against the normal citizenry of the the South during the U.S. Civil War. After capturing Atlanta, Georgia, he moved approximately 60,000 troops eastward towards the ocean in South Carolina. As they moved eastward, they raided crops and winter food stores and brutally attached any resistance they met. The effect was to demoralize and undermine the civilian population, leaving many people morally shattered and without hope for the South's recovery, which was the intention of Sherman.
