I remember reading about this very thing in Barbara Tuchman's "A distant Mirror". In medieval France there was a large number of bandits that looted the country

I remember reading about this very thing in Barbara Tuchman's "A distant Mirror". In medieval France there was a large number of bandits that looted the countryside and wreaked havoc wherever they went. The royalty would find some excuse to wage war and hire a general to round up the bandits and bring them away with promises of war bounty. In the scope of world history, though, this was probably not too common.