It is said that WWI ended so-called civilized warfare. The Christmas Truce and football games was no repeated the following season
But even at Verdun, one side refused to shell the road of the other sides supply lines. It was just the ration train, was the justification. Soup and bread and drinking water. It would just bring reprisals if you did.
That's sort of the point. Stop the logistics, stop the resistance, end the war.
But throughout it was like an understanding. Here and elsewhere. Don't rock the boat and make it hard on the other side. It just invites retaliatory misery. But could extra misery have ended the horrible war 2 years sooner?
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But there are always earlier examples of what Sherman called "hard war". Civil War troops regularly attacked and burnt the supply trains of the opposing forces, and Sherman's March thru Georgia, along with Sherman's devastation of the Shenandoah Valley are good examples of an army attacking infrastructure and supply rather than direct military targets. Later, during the Indian Wars, the most successful tactics used were the eradication of the buffalo (destruction of a vital food supply) and attacking the Indians in their winter camps.
That was Sheridan in the Shenandoah, of course. Damn autocorrect.
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