It still happens sometimes but these days it’s usually not done with the permission of the military leadership unless you’re talking about the soldiers of warlords or terrorist organizations. It is a war crime and not officially allowed anywhere.
Napoleon was probably one of the last generals to heavily rely on plunder for feeding his troops. He did so much in fact that one majorly successful strategy that his enemies used against him was to evacuate their civilian populations and burn their own fields and food storage to starve him out.
After the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s and the massive amount of human cost involved in them, attitudes towards the practice started to sour. It was first officially classified as a war crime after The Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907.
So basically the idea of pillaging being an unacceptable thing to do is fairly recent and it still occasionally happens under the table.
The reason it took so long is probably also the reason that it’s taking so long for death penalties and torture to fully phase out. Pre-industrial societies don’t often have the practical resources to feed thousands of soldiers thousands of miles away or to imprison people or keep track of them after they’ve committed a crime.
These days we have planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention efficient enough farming techniques that most of our populations don’t need to work in agriculture and/or forage and hunt to survive. We can get food and people to the other side of the world in less than two days and dedicate space and resources to imprisoning people or keeping track of them while they’re on house arrest.
Before industrialization all of this was stupidly difficult. Why waste food on criminals and soldiers and waste able bodied people getting the food to them? If the food survives long enough anyways.
So the simplest solution is stealing and death. Kill the criminals to get them out of the way, let the soldiers steal food so you don’t have to waste resources and manpower feeding them.
It’s brutal, it sucks, there were more humane solutions, but it was practical and convenient.
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