Two years had hardly elapsed when Mahomet accused the people of Mecca of a breach of their engagement. When a man is really desirous of quarrelling, a pretext is never wanting. He was now strong, and his enemies were weak. His superstitious reverence for the city of his nativity, and for the temple it contained, served also to influence his determination for war. The time since the concluding of the truce had been skilfully employed in seducing the adherents of the Koreish, and converting to his religion the chief citizens of Mecca. With an army of 10,000 men he marched to besiege it, and no sooner did he appear before the walls than the city surrendered at discretion. [Illustration: The Muezzin.] The religion of Mahomet may be considered now to have been permanently settled. The conquest of Mecca and of the Koreish was the signal for the submission of the rest of Arabia. The events of the prophet's after-life cease, therefore, to possess an interest for a Western reader. They were, for the most part, merely expeditions undertaken for the purpose of reducing the petty tribes who still resisted his authority, and were all of them eventually successful. The influence and religion of Mahomet continued rapidly to extend; his difficulties were over; and the hour of his prosperity has nothing to instruct or to amuse the general reader. Between the taking of Mecca and the period of his death, not more than three years elapsed. In that short period he had destroyed the idols of Arabia; had extended his conquests to the borders of the Greek and Persian empires; had rendered his name formidable to those once mighty kingdoms; had tried his arms against the undisciplined troops of the former, and defeated them in a desperate encounter at Muta. His throne was now firmly established, and an impetus given to the Arabian nations that in a few years induced them to invade, and enabled them to subdue, a great portion of the globe. India, Persia, the Greek Empire, the whole of Asia Minor, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, were reduced by their victorious arms. The Muezzin[10] was heard throughout an empire greater than Alexander's; and though the temporal power of his successors has now faded to a shadow, the religion which he founded still holds sway throughout all that empire, and is even endeavoring to extend itself. Although Mahomet did not live to see such mighty conquests, he laid the first foundations of this wide-spreading dominion, and established over the whole of Arabia, and some part of Syria, the religion he had proclaimed.