Fortunately one of those little crusades, consisting of a fleet and a few thousand men, arrived at this juncture, headed by Stephen, Count of Perche. Baldwin welcomed them with delight, and made the best use of them, defeating by their help the Saracens at every point in the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch, and lastly gave the Damascenes the most complete defeat they had ever experienced. It must always be remembered that it was by such windfalls and adventitious aids as these that the kingdom of Jerusalem was maintained. The pilgrims who came to pray fought in the intervals of prayer; a small percentage of them always remained in the country and attached themselves to the fortunes of king or baron. When the influx of pilgrims was great the new blood kept up the stamina, physical as well as moral, of the Syrian Christians; when the influx was small the king had to depend upon the _pullani_, the Syrian born, the creoles of the country, who were weedy, false, and cowardly, like those knights and soldiers who surrendered, rather than strike a blow for their lives, to Nûr-ed-dín. In 1160 died Queen Milicent. Against her moral character, since the scandal about Hugh of Jaffa, no word had been breathed. But she was ambitious, crafty, and intriguing, like her sisters, not one of whom lived happily with her husband. She founded a convent on the Mount of Olives, in return for which the ecclesiastical biographers, as is their wont, are loud in their praises of her. Her youngest sister was made its first abbess. She died of some mysterious malady, for which no cure could be found. Her memory failed, and her limbs were already long dead when she breathed her last. No one was allowed to go into the room where she lay save a very few, including her two sisters, the Countess of Tripoli, widow of Raymond, and the Abbess of Saint Lazarus of Bethany. Probably the disease she suffered from was that which broke out in her grandson, Baldwin IV., leprosy. The year before her death the king had contracted a splendid marriage, advantageous from every point of view. He married Theodora, niece to the Emperor of Constantinople. The new queen was only thirteen: she was singularly beautiful, and brought, which was of more importance, a large dowry in ready money. Baldwin was passionately fond of his young bride, and from the moment of his marriage gave up all those follies of which he had been guilty before. But he had a very short period of this new and better life. Renaud de Chatillon, who had made his peace with the emperor, by means of the most abject and humiliating submissions, got into trouble again, and was taken prisoner by the Mohammedans. Baldwin, affairs in the north falling into confusion in consequence of this accident, went to aid in driving back the enemy. Here he was seized with dysentery and fever, diseases common enough in the Syrian climate. His physician, one Barak, an Arab, gave him pills, of which he was to take some