[ahmedfromtunis]

> You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged.

Isn't this how Rome was sacked way back when it was just a city among many others in the Italian peninsula? If I recall correctly, this was a wake-up call for the city to start working on protecting itself adequately.

[RupertSalt]

In 2008, I visited Manresa in Catalonia.

An uncited passage in Wikipedia explains how the French Troops, defeated during their Napoleonic Invasion (1808), burned and demolished Manresa on retreat, and the villagers simply rebuilt the buildings from the same rubble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manresa

I can attest that many buildings downtown are definitely rubble-y.