My point is when you're out performing a takeover action you aren't doing it within the confines of the army's camp. Your men are spread out, not in formatiom, peforming an activity.
Actually they'd probably be traveling in a patrol formation in large groups and they'd have some units standing by to move in force in case of a riot. That is assuming they're not complete morons of course.
You are far more likely to get overrun and its not hard to do it.
It's pretty hard actually. Especially when you're opponents are severely emaciated and your "allies" are just as likely to kill you as they are your "enemies".
If a 25 man peasant mob can stop you from looting,
Which is a stupid feature people are actively looking to change.
whats to stop the peasants in a population center from mobbing and killing your men when their children are starving to death and you have food? Never under estimate the power of the mob.
A sword through their stomachs. You also shouldn't over estimate the power of the mob either. Disorganized mobs have indeed on occasion overthrown occupying forces. The vast majority of the time however they get slaughtered to the last man.
In the case of a food riot the peasants can't even really take advantage of their numbers because they aren't united. In fact they're much more likely to kill each other for the food then to attack the soldiers. Again I refer to the incidents in
Night, the camp prisoners for the most part had no loyalty to each other. Unlike a well trained military force they didn't think of themselves as a unit. There was no "If we all band together we can all get their food" the thinking was more along the lines of "If I kill the guy next to me I can get his food". That's what it boils down to. Each peasant, as an individual will ask themselves, at least subconsciously, "Do I try to take food from the weak civilian or the armed and armored soldier?". Most are going to pick the civilian. A few will be fool hardy enough to pick the soldier and get slaughtered. Then the ones that were about to pick soldier are going to think twice. People further off will see this and their first thought will be to stay out of it. In fact that's what saved Elie Wiesel when the guards were throwing food to the prisoners. There's a reason military forces spend so much time training their soldiers to view themselves as a unit, it's all to overcome these sort of individual self preservation instincts.
The main reason this wouldn't work is you're not in formation and have no support in the midst of a peasant population that usually vastly outnumbers you. If you were on battle footing, formed up in an open field, yea, that would make a difference... But you can't takeover a region like that.
First of all, a well trained force should be able to form ranks quickly.
Second, at any given moment your force is not necessarily vastly outnumbered. A city is not a mass blob of people. The distribution of population density is complex. A unit could conceivably find a neighborhood or gathering place in a city that they can feed completely, at least for one meal, without leaving anyone out and without making a big scene. In a rural region soldiers can target individual villages.
The main flaw in your argument is at every turn it relies on the soldiers going about the general act of distributing food like absolute idiots who don't use the slightest bit of common sense.
