Yeah, that's always bothered me.
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I have no idea what you speak of. You mean Henry IV Raspe, landgraf of Thuringia, anti-king and king of Germany, right? This man was certainly more of an administrator, diplomat and plotter than a warrior or commander of men able to raze a town to the ground.
Really? Best check here.
As for the Isenburg near Essen: it was built only around 1240. However the castles of Friedrich von Isenberg, found guilty of murdering Engelbert and executed for that, were indeed razed. But razing castles is defortification and has very little to do with "scorched earth".
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The most famous ancient account of sowing a city with salt was the destruction of the rebellious city of Shechem in the the Bible (Judges 9:45).
So, in 1299, when Pope Boniface VIII's forces destroyed Palestrina, the account is that he ordered it plowed under like Carthage, and that it be sowed with salt. It is not clear from the phrasing of the account whether it was thought that Carthage had been both plowed under and sowed with salt, or whether this was a case of stacking symbolisms from the destructions of both Carthage and Shechem on Palestrina.
Aside from that bit, there's apparently no documented statement that Carthage was sown with salt prior to the 19th Century, and the approximate current academic consensus, ever since the issue was raised in the Journal of Classical Philology in 1986, is that Carthage probably was not sown with salt (either practically or as a matter of a few symbolic handfuls).
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This is a tricky topic. Clever Boniface VIII needed many allies among the Italian cities to finally in 1299 conquer Palestrina, the main stronghold of his enemies, the Colonna. It was close to the main stronghold of his own family, the Caetani - so apparently he did his utmost to make Palestrina disappear. That included fierce rhetoric, an attempt to destroy its ancient walls and more modern buildings and the resettlement of the temporarily subjected people of Palestrina to a newly built Civitas Papalis (Town of the Pope) in the plain. But Civitas Papalis was destroyed by a conflagration of unknown origin already in 1300, and around 1307 - some four years after the death of Boniface - the Colonna retook the area of Palestrina, moved its people back and rebuilt it as they could.
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On the topic of an army marches on its stomach, are there any accounts of a medieval army that normally feeds itself from local produce, that strips everything edible from a farming community? And when they can't get enough they burn the place down in frustration?
Say weather or the enemy traps them in one locale for too long. Or perhaps they are hungry advancing, then shortly afterwards come back the same way, still hungry?
Could be bandits or mercenaries not paid as other possibilities
Or would there be other reasons that a healthy farming village is suddenly abandoned and left fallow for years at a time?
Then again, this being Mythic Europe a dragon might have moved in and eaten all the available meat, four or two-legged. I am wondering if this might become a saga scenario...
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Since the word "salary" comes from Roman Army paying its soldiers with salt (at least in part), I doubt the troops would be happy seeing their wages being tossed out like that.
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From what I've read, this appears to be standard operating procedure.
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An army marching through usually caused destruction by its presence more than intent. They usually didn’t intend to kill all the peasants, but left disease in their wake, as any large group of people moving through semi isolated peasants would. (Most people never going more than 10 miles from their homes is comparative isolation.) The army also didn’t have effective logistics, so small groups of armed men trying to feed themselves have a tendency to eat anything that isn’t well hidden.
Then the social structures that keep people behaving break down. Young men far from home, armed, among an unarmed victim population doesn’t result in good “Christian” behavior most of the time. So, the peasants they find are subject to disease, famine, robbery, and casual cruelty.
Anyone who gives them protection during this: covenant, walled town, or local lord with a castle, is going to be a hero.
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Take a look at the routiers or brabançons of the 13th century. These had few means than plunder to make themselves fed or paid during a campaign, and at its end more often than not turned into robbers. They also were not respected by anybody, including their employers - so could also be sacrificed if that was favorable. Local militias went after these whenever they could. There never was a ransom for them and at the end of a battle like Bouvines they could be slaughtered standing on the battlefield.
See Georges Duby, LE DIMANCHE DE BOUVINES cp.6 : Amazon.fr
Employing routiers was considered a necessity by many lords - but not a conscious decision of a "scorched earth" strategy.
EDIT: Below is a translation to English of a tricky and hard to enforce part of Canon 27 of the 3rd Lateran Council from 1179, lumping together with Cathars and excommunicating those lords who employ routiers:
With regard to the Brabanters, Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, Coterelli and Triaverdini {17}, who practise such cruelty upon Christians that they respect neither churches nor monasteries, and spare neither widows, orphans, old or young nor any age or sex, but like pagans destroy and lay everything waste, we likewise decree that those who hire, keep or support them, in the districts where they rage around, should be denounced publicly on Sundays and other solemn days in the churches, that they should be subject in every way to the same sentence and penalty as the above-mentioned heretics and that they should not be received into the communion of the church, unless they abjure their pernicious society and heresy. As long as such people persist in their wickedness, let all who are bound to them by any pact know that they are free from all obligations of loyalty, homage or any obedience. On these {18} and on all the faithful we enjoin, for the remission of sins, that they oppose this scourge with all their might and by arms protect the Christian people against them. Their goods are to be confiscated and princes free to subject them to slavery. (Under Pope Alexander)
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"Scorched Earth" seems to be the wrong title for this thread, but I can't think of a better term for stripping all edible resources from a rural location, and possibly wrecking everything else.
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This has been so common throughout history that it virtually never even invites comment/recording.
This is much rarer, as it shows distinct lack of command by the officers in charge. You burn a place down to deny it to the enemy, to incite terror and destroy morale, as a punishment etc. Not in frustration. To do so invites needless retribution.
Well, not a healthy village, but one affected by a pestilence would be left uninhabited.
One that got raided often enough would eventually be abandoned, too.
Depending on the location, a natural disaster such as a flood would also leave it uninhabited.
Some holy man might have convinced all inhabitants to leave and go on a pilgrimage/crusade.
Finally, plenty of mystical threats might have removed all its inhabitants, possibly very violently, possibly very subtly: dragons, ghosts, demons, a hateful forest spirit, a curse of barrenness, a newly formed regio, a variant of the Shrouded Glen etc.
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I doubt any army ever stripped everything edible from an area they were passing through, primarilly because peasants anticipating the coming army (armies move slowly) hid what they could, and it would take more food to keep the army in place while they searched thoroughly than it would gain by finding everything.
Burning villages down was sometimes done out of frustration or just for the soldier's amusement, but not all food would be hidden where it could be easily reached by fire. They could burn buildings and fields but living woods do not generally burn easily (except during drought and only an idiot marches an army through a drought), nor will fire find what is burned. Fire will destroy the fields in the short term but also fertilize the soil.
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So, I had time to check my notes:
in 1231 The city of Landsberg and the Castle Rodersen have been devastated. Both of whom belonged to Mainz were destroyed in the name of the Landgrave Konrad Raspe von Thuringia (the brother of Henry Raspe) in the feud with the Mainz Archbishop Siegfried von Eppstein III over the partition of the landgraviate following the death of Ludwig IV.
Regarding Büdingen:
I need to investigate further. However the existence of a town in 2024 doesn't prove or disprove the destruction of a castle in the 13th century. There are two "castles" in or close to Büdingen:
1- the one in the "city" center (which I am legitimately tempted to go visit). It has a keep from the 2nd half of the 13th century, which could be the result of a rebuilding effort once enough funds had been gathered post destruction. It is allegedly possible to do guided tours, I will report if I do take part.
2- a castle ruin 2-3 km away from the city center
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Yep. That little Landsberg in Hessia was founded by the counts of Waldeck around a decade before to secure their position in a border dispute with the Thuringians. It looks like Landsberg and its inhabitants were pawns in that dispute from the beginning.
If you talk of Büdingen as a castle, not a town, then we can stop here: if a castle was taken, its destruction was an issue of defortification, hence of local power politics - not of "scorched earth" strategy. The same holds for little Landsberg in Hessia.
I only ever mentioned the castle of Büdingen.
Absolutely, the same applies to the cheveauchees: the murdered peasants and deveastated farms were just part of the game of rich-guy tag played by the nobles. Force the other guy out of his castle to stop the economic damage done to his tax base.
The chevauchées of European lords were a strategy from the 14th century on. The mongols did them earlier, of course.
As mentioned already, William I of England’s Harrying of the North was expressly punitive and deliberately destructive. The worst affected areas were depopulated to the extent that the Domesday Book of almost 20 years later recorded many areas as wasteland (‘wasta’). In general, conquerors usually had an eye to the future value of the land, so deliberate destruction beyond a certain point was rare.
A hungry or enraged dragon could probably approach such a level of destruction if suitably motivated, but in such a case depth of destruction would be less of a factor than sheer terror of such an unstoppable predator. However, depopulation would still be a likely outcome; Tolkien referred to “The Desolation of the Dragon” with good reason.
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Keep in mind as well that a dragon may well be trying to prevent the re-establishment of civilization so it will have a wilderness to hunt in.
Meaning the legend of New England/Nova Anglia had a factual basis.
So in the case of scorched earth/harrying activities, the survivors run as far, far away as they can.