Slighting
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Slighting is the deliberate damage of high-status buildings to reduce their value as military, administrative, or social structures. This destruction of property is sometimes extended to the contents
Corfe Castle in Dorset was slighted in 1646 during the English Civil War. Parliament slighted or proposed to slight more than 100 buildings, including castles, town walls, abbeys, and houses.
Slighting could extend beyond the building, and when Kenilworth Castle was slighted in 1649 the moat was drained.
A depiction of slighting from the Tschachtlanchronik, a 15th-century chronicle (Tschachtlanchronik Ms A 120, 127)
Each method of destruction leaves a distinctive trace. At Newark Castle in Nottinghamshire the use of gunpowder left a crater damage pattern.
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,
Slighting
…Scuttling – Act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull Scorched Earth – Military strategy…
The Union army engaging in a scorched-earth policy as part of Sherman's March to the Sea
The forces of Vlad the Impaler were associated with torches, particularly outside Târgoviște.
Napoleon's retreat from Moscow