In 1688, France attacked the German Palatinate. [11] The survivors were reduced to cannibalism,[12] with one report stating that the skulls of the dead were cracked open so that their brains could be eaten. The Chinese National Revolutionary Army destroyed dams and levees in an attempt to flood the land to slow down the advancement of Japanese soldiers, which further added to the environmental impact and resulting in the 1938 Huang He flood. Vlad the Impaler retreated to Transylvania. The German forces, forced to retreat because of an overall strategic situation, covered their retreat towards Norway by devastating large areas of northern Finland by using a scorched-earth strategy. Many civilian casualties were caused by disease and famine. The concept of scorched earth is sometimes applied figuratively to the business world in which a firm facing a takeover attempts to make itself less valuable by selling off its assets.[2]. In Paris a malcontent general, Claude-François de Malet, nearly succeeded in carrying out a coup d’état after announcing on October 23, 1812, that Napoleon had died in Russia. On pretence of cutting off the resources of the Swedes, the whole country was laid waste and plundered; and often, when the Imperialists were unable any longer to maintain a place, it was laid in ashes, in order to leave the enemy nothing but ruins. Denied their main source of livelihood and demoralized, the Comanche and the Kiowa abandoned the area (see Palo Duro Canyon). Belgrano, faced with the prospect of total defeat and territorial loss, ordered all people to pack their necessities, including food and furniture, and to follow him in carriages or on foot together with whatever cattle and beasts of burden that could endure the journey.
Pushing relentlessly on despite dwindling numbers, the Grand Army met with disaster as the invasion progressed. This incident was a major factor in Napoleon’s decision to hasten back to France ahead of the Grand Army. That defeat degenerated fast into collapse. The empire was surrounded by a ring of vassal states ruled over by the emperor’s relatives: the Kingdom of Westphalia (Jérôme Bonaparte); the Kingdom of Spain (Joseph Bonaparte); the Kingdom of Italy (with Eugène de Beauharnais, Joséphine’s son, as viceroy); the Kingdom of Naples (Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law); and the Principality of Lucca and Piombino (Félix Bacciochi, another brother-in-law). During the Second Punic War in 218–202 BC, the Carthaginians used the method selectively while storming through Italy. Of gud King Robert's testiment. [10] They left Chester next year and marched into Wales. A British landing party reported that the population of Messinia was close to mass starvation. To revenge himself upon the Duke of Pomerania, the imperial general permitted his troops, upon his retreat, to exercise every barbarity on the unfortunate inhabitants of Pomerania, who had already suffered but too severely from his avarice.