Newsgroups: sci.military
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!cbnews!military
From: jwm@wdl76.wdl.fac.com (Jon W Meyer)
Subject: Re: Civil War technology => Scorched Earth
Organization: Ford Aerospace
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 90 03:24:54 GMT
Approved: military@att.att.com
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.032454.12493@cbnews.att.com>
Keywords: Ironclads, Civil War
References: <1990Oct11.050851.29295@cbnews.att.com* <1990Oct15.034315.14142@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct17.011127.13242@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military-request@att.att.com
Lines: 26



From: jwm@wdl76.wdl.fac.com (Jon W Meyer)
nak%archie@att.att.com (Neil A Kirby) writes:
|In article <1990Oct15.034315.14142@cbnews.att.com>, woody@eos.arc.nasa.gov (Wayne Wood) writes:
|> to the best of my knowledge napoleon never used scorched earth
|> as an offensive tactic.  

|When the Assyrians of Ninevah took the city of Babylon, they did more than
|take the city.  They killed almost (If memory serves, less than a dozen
|survivors) everyone.  They took the city apart so that no two stones were
|left one on top the other.  They threw the topsoil into the Euphrates
|river!  They were arguably more thorough in their destruction than the bomb
|was to Hiroshima; Hiroshima had surviors, buildings partly intact, etc.

|[mod.note:  And I'll mention the Roman destruction of Carthage after
|that city's fall, so nobody else has to. 8-)  - Bill ]

How about the sack of Kiev?

Also, on the conscription issue, I believe the Roman's implemented conscription
as part of the Marian reforms, predating the U.S. Civil War conscription just
a tad.

Jon