This chapter explains the myth depicting Byron as martyr to the Greek cause. ‘Noble warrior!', wrote the German poet Wilhelm Müller, on hearing of Lord Byron's death in Greece, ‘thou wert worthy of the cause so nobly fought’. That he knew his way round a battlefield remains one of the most enduring of Byronic myths, often invoked as part of the notion he was a freedom fighter. The Reader's Guide to World Literature puts it in a nutshell: ‘Proud and arrogant, with a low opinion of most men, he loved mankind, abhorred injustice, and died fighting the Turks to help the Greeks secure freedom’. Byron's reputation as man of action depends on sympathetic readings of his time in Italy and Greece. It is true that in Ravenna he associated with, and may have joined, the Carbonari, a group whose declared objective was to purge Italy of drunkenness, and gambling.