Rome and the Mediterranian had a long history of deforestation, going to Egypt and Sumer. The first story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, can be read as a story of ecological limits and deforestation.
Roman heating systems, hypocausts, had voracious fuel appetites. I'm not finding a solid reference but believe one could consume a ton or more of wood daily. That was imported from distant locations.
Early industrial windmills and water wheels typically produced 10 - 20 kW of power, with perhaps a few thousands throughout Europe, for a total power capacity of a few tens of MW. The power availed by coal and oil is thousands and millions of times this.
U.S. woodfuel consumption wasn't sustainable, and hasn't increased from levels of the late 19th century.
Europe's coal belt starts in Scotland, runs through England, into France (and a nubbin in northern Spain / Portugal), Germany, and Silesia.
Oddly enough, the first countries to industrialise were, in order, England (which wasn't busily falling to pieces and/or fighting off invaders), then (after they'd stopped falling to pieces and/or fighting off invaders) France and Germany. They remain the heart of the European economy, a century and a half later.
The third great set of coal deposits were in the United States, though that was a country that also had tremendous forests, more readily accessed (and frequently local to where energy was needed). Coal consumption didn't exceed wood as a fuel until the 1880s. The US also benefited from oil, and was the world's leading extractor of oil from the 1860s to the 1950s. Having first developed coal, iron, railroads, canals, and steamships, the US could usefully transport that oil from the remote rural regions in which it was found (Titusville, Pennsylvania, Ventura, California, Spindletop, Texas) to the urbanised regions (New York, Philadelphia, Boston) where it was used.
The bootstrapping of technology was itself a really interesting story -- gunpowder, metallurgy, iron, fuels, steel, electricity, and prime movers, most especially diesel and gas turbine engines. See Vaclav Smil (Energy in History) and Manfred Weissenbacher (Sources of Power) for more on this.
(The fourth coal belt is in China.)