As of 1629, when the war that would come to be known as the "30 years war" entered its 11th year, Denmark`s intervention on the side of the Protestant Estates of the Realm ended with a military as well as a political disaster for King Christian IV. and his German Protestant allies. Wallenstein had lured the Danish King and his army deep into North Germany`s heartland, thusly forcing him to overstretch his supply lines, isolating the Danish army from both the Baltic Seaports and the motherland`s continental border to fall back upon. In masterful fashion, the Kaiser`s Generalissimus managed to avoid battle, keeping the enemy in a state of constant motion. Pursuing the Imperial army ever more deeply up the Elbe, the Danish invasion force increasingly suffered from disciplinary prawblems. mutiny was rife, but before King Christian`s troops could dissolve into thin air, they were routed by Wallenstein`s army at the Elbe Bridge near Dessau in the Duchy of Saxony.
The fact that Wallenstein felt the need to lecture his own generals about the merits of ATTRITION WARFARE shows how infinitely far ahead of his own time the man was. Unlike almost any other commander of the 30 Years War, Wallenstein enforced rigid discipline among his soldiers, there are well-documented cases of high-ranking officers whom he had courtmartialed and executed for plunder, extortion or rape., the most prominent one being that of Colonel Guerzenich. The latter, a cavalry officer who served as a regimental commander in Wallenstein`s army during the campaign against the Danish King and his North German allies, hailed from Cologne and was a younger son of one the Free Imperial City`s most ancient and distinguished Patrician families - the well-bred man`s pedigree didn`t keep him from raping nuns in a convent - Guerzenich, blue-blood officer in an army that allegedly fought for the "Catholic Cause". When Guerzenich`s Dragoons, on their march northward toward the Danish/North German theatre, killed two peasants whilst plundering a Bohemian village, Wallenstein decided that he`d had enough of the Colonel. Guerzenich was sentenced to death by a court martial and decapitated.
