A vivid firsthand account of a sixteenth-century German knight and mercenary who recounts decades of warfare, feuds, and shifting loyalties across the Holy Roman Empire, including the loss of his right hand and the use of a famous iron prosthesis; the narrative mixes brutal battlefield detail with candid reflections on honor, service to princes, imprisonment, legal disputes and the social upheavals of the Reformation era, offering a practical, unvarnished portrait of martial life and the turbulent political world he navigated.