Dilandu wrote:
They were forbidden to TARGET civilians, but they weren't held prosecuted for the collateral damage against targets, that they presumed as military (even if the identification was wrong).
I.e. they couldn't just "oh, we have pretty little town here... let's drop our load on it!" They always tried to hit some object: railway station, factory, dock - i.e. legitimate military targets. They often missed (but, must point out, that they often NOT missed - the accuracy of zeppelins raids under good conditions could be really imprsseive), but they always at least tried to attack something important, not just damage the general population.
That may have been the intention, but it wasn't what happened. The Zeppelin Raids 'military' targets were located in the middle of civilian housing and that civilian housing was badly hit; that's partly why - as John Prigent says - the WW1 bombings backfired terribly on Germany in World War II. If you target the London docks and instead hit a school near the docks (sixteen of the kids killed were between four and six years old), people aren't really going to look favourably on 'oops, we missed. But our accuracy under good conditions is much better.'
To put it in a Safehold context, when the Charisian vessels were seized in Ferayd, the intention was that no civilians would be harmed - certainly that no children would be harmed. That wasn't what happened - and while Charis had the SNARCS to point them to the truly guilty and didn't court martial those they knew had tried to minimise the loss of life, they still burnt the dock part of Ferayd to the ground.