Icon - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

the description of the scene surrounding the city: “the Moslem’s leaguering lines” (SC2.31). The attacking army are particularly identified with their religion rather thantheir nationality, again as part of the equation of religion with ethnicity, but herespecifically in the context of war.This warfare is also described in explicitly religious terms within the discourse of theMuslim side. Much in the vein of Coumorgi’s comment on “Christian dogs”, Alp’sarmy are exhorted to letnone escapeAged or young, in Christian shape;[….]Leave not in Corinth a living one –A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls[.] (SC 22.649-50, 65-6).When Alp is urging his men on to this genocide, he promises, “He who first downsthe red cross may crave /His heart’s dearest wish; let him ask it, and have!” (SC22.672-3). This war is represented as being, for the Muslims, a war againstChristianity. Even the slaughter of warfare, which leaves both sides mangled alike, isrepresented as having been the result of Muslim aggression: the Muslims are attackingCorinth. As a result, the landscape is covered by bodies of the slain, spread inindistinguishable masses of human wreckage:Some fell on the shore, but, far away,Scatter’d o’er the isthmus lay;Christian or Moslem, which be they?[…]Not the matrons that them boreCould discern their offspring more[.] (SC 33.994-6, 1003-4).A further effect of the war is the devastation of nature by war, marked by the long listof animals disturbed by the explosion which destroys the church (SC 33.1012-33).Byron shows not just one victim of the ethnic conflict, but all: the Western, the191