From the time that man discovered fire and devised ways to use it as a tool for survival and advancement, it also has been employed as a weapon for destruction. Sun Tsu's The Art of War (500 B.C.) refers to incendiary arrows, while Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War describes a flame weapon used by the Spartans in 42 B.C. Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ascribes Roman success at Constantinople (1453 A.D.) to “Greek fire,” ignited naptha mixed with pitch and resin and spread upon the surface of the water. Great Britain employed Greek fire almost five centuries later as a defence along its coastlines in anticipation of an invasion in 1940.

In the European wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, armies employed compulsory taxation of the countryside in lieu of looting to finance their activities. A defaulting town would have some of its buildings burned, leading to the tax being referred to as Brandschatzung, “burning money.” This practice became widespread during the Thirty Years war.