Reminds me of that time the Romans made shorefall on the British Isles, only to be confronted by hordes of druids and their followers, after which they massacred them, and then they realized that they were actually bamboozled into participating in a giant sacrifice to the pagan gods, the very same they just provoked.
To us, this may seem like mere superstition but to the Roman, "Foreign" gods were every bit as real as their own. That little manoeuvre had them quaking for quite a while afterward.