God murders in mysterious (and highly creative) ways.
Reminds me of this one thing I saw on bodica. At the time, there was this roman consul/general who was doing a pretty good job of stabilizing britain for the empire, and finally he decided to raid this one island considered sacred by most of the major tribes. So he goes there with several ships, expecting heavy resistance, but when they close into the shore, they see this eerie sight consisting of hundreds of druids dressed in all black robes, and a bunch of women in front of them, butt naked, carrying only torches.
The romans, being very supersticious, looked at all this and went "holy shit I dont want to get off this ship". So the general starts cursing at them and they finally land on the ship and start marching towards the tribals. So the women with torches charge at them while the druids put their hands to the sky and start chanting loudly, which makes the romans WTF even more, but doesn't stop them from murdering every woman and druid on the beach.
Turns out, however, not all of the women had died, and one of them, before dying, throw her torch at the pile of druid corpses. Thats when the romans realized that most of the beach was covered in a pitch like substance, including the druids, and it was all set ablaze. No romans were harmed, but they were now scared shitless. You see, the romans didn't believe only their gods existed, they believed a lot of other gods were just as real and that magic was certainly a thing, and they soon realized that this wasn't a battle, it was a ritual sacrifice, and they had just taken part in it.
Then, by sheer coincidence, boudica had already started her rebellion while they were away raiding the island, and several cities got fucked in the process, with even women and children and animals being killed. Not only that but a number of weird disasters started happening, like the statue of a certain roman consul simply falling over for no reason and stuff like that. The romans really did believe they were cursed and that they would all die horribly.
Rome came out on top later because boudica fucking sucked at strategy and her army consisted mostly of dweebs without real weapons or equipment, but hey, Rome took it all so seriously it later sent a much larger force to fully murderize anyone who didn't submit and stabilize the region.