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Theſe ſo great Slaughters, Nations mighty dread, / Like Whirlwinds through ſo many Cities ſpread, / Which might have been anothers cloſing Fame, / Were but his Marches Actions; thus he came: / And in ſo many glorious Conqueſts ſhar'd / The Spoils of War, while he for War prepar'd.
1725, Benjamin Marshall, “A Chapter. Shewing that the Abstracted Nature of the Seventy Weeks of Years of this Prophecy, as the Said Number of Weeks of Years Contains Exactly Four Hundred and Ninety Years, and that as They Cannot Possibly Contain Less, so neither Can They Contain More than That Number of Years; ”, in A Chronological Treatise upon the Seventy Weeks of Daniel; , London: Printed for James Knapton, at the Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard, →OCLC, page 56:
For according to that Hiſtorian [Josephus] upon Nebuchadnezzar [II]'s coming to Babylon in the year after, upon his father's death, and becoming Lord of all his father's Empire, He with the SPOILS of WAR magnificently repair'd, and deckt the Temple of Bel, &c.
The march of mankind from ſavageneſs to refinement is devious and ſlow. In that iron age when the multitude look for ſubſiſtence to the ſpoils of war, and the wants of a powerful empire are relieved by the tributes impoſed on ſubjugated ſtates, the haughty victors, devoting their captives to the taſk of cultivating the ſoil, riot in the fruits of that drudgery which they diſdain to ſhare.
1810, Virgil, “Virgil’s Æneid. Book XI.”, in Christopher Pitt, transl., edited by Samuel Johnson, The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper; including the Series Edited, with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Dr. Samuel Johnson: and the Most Approved Translations. The Additional Lives by Alexander Chalmers, F.S.A. In Twenty-one Volumes, volume XIX, London: Printed for J. Johnson , →OCLC, page 614, column 2:
Stripp'd of his trappings, and his head declin'd; / Æthon, his gen'rous warrior-horse, behind, / Moves with a solemn, slow, majestic pace; / And the big tears rolling down his face. / These, the young hero's [Pallas's] lance and helmet bear; / The rest, the victor seiz'd, the spoils of war.
2011, Alexander Gillespie, A History of the Laws of War: Volume 2: The Customs and Laws of War with regards to Civilians in Times of Conflict, volume 2, Oxford: Hart Publishing, →ISBN:
The taking of the spoils of war was important to both Muslim and Christian communities during the Crusades. This was particularly so due to its feudal nature, whereby large numbers of men served without pay, and booty became one of the few sources of reward and resources from which campaigns could be sustained.
Tens of thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee their homes after IS [Islamic State] fighters took the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in August 2014. Thousands of women and girls were treated as "spoils of war" and openly sold in slave markets to IS militants. They were separated from the men and boys, many of whom were shot dead.
