Scorched earth
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A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and infrastructure. Its use is possible by a retreating army to leave nothing of value worth taking, to weaken the attacking force or by an advancing army to fight against unconventional warfare.
Sherman's March to the Sea by Darley and Ritchie
Corfe Castle was slighted during the English Civil War so that its defences could not be reused.
The forces of Vlad the Impaler were associated with torches, particularly outside Târgoviște.
Napoleon's retreat from Moscow
Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. Kitchener came to prominence for his imperial campaigns, his involvement in the Second Boer War, and his central role in the early part of the First World War.
Kitchener on his mother's lap, with his brother and sister
Kitchener, Commander of the Egyptian Army (centre right), 1898
Duffus Bros, platinum print/NPG P403. Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, 1901