A terrible scene of carnage followed when the gates were opened, and the wild Franks, Normans, and Italians poured into the town. lt is said that--in strange contrast to the clemency of Omar and (afterwards) of Saladin--10,000 Moslems were slain in the Ḥaram, when the knights rode in on a pavement soaked with blood. The massacre went on for seven days. Tancred in vain promised security to fugitives in the Aḳṣa, for all were slain by the lawless soldiers. Only those who took refuge in the Tower of David were saved by Raymond of Toulouse, and sent with their families and baggage to Ascalon, which long remained an outpost of the Egyptians in Palestine. After this conquest the success of the Latins was so complete that no Moslem foe appeared before the walls of Jerusalem for eighty-eight years; and when Saladin began to become formidable in 1178 A. D., nine years before the fall of the kingdom, it was found that the ramparts had fallen into ruins through age, and they were hastily repaired.[501] The Frank rule in Palestine, from 1099 to 1187 A. D., was strong and prosperous, and gaps of many years occur in the chronicles, during which we read of no wars, even on the frontiers, which were secured by a line of mighty castles. Notices of Jerusalem, in chronicles and legal documents and letters, thus refer mainly to gifts of land made to the churches and to the military orders, or to internal disputes between the regulars and the patriarchs. [Sidenote: THE FRANK KINGS] Godfrey, being elected, refused to take the title of king in a city where his Master had only worn a crown of thorns. Within a year he died of fever at the early age of forty on July 18, 1100, and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, the first Latin king, who ruled successfully till 1117 A. D.[502] The third king was Baldwin II. (de Burg), a cousin of Godfrey, who married an Armenian princess. He was captive from May 30, 1123, to August 24, 1124, at Ḥarrân, having been seized by Balak, nephew of El Ghâzi, the lord of Mardîn, and was only delivered after Balak had been slain by Jocelyn of Edessa. But this event did not affect Jerusalem. He left four half Armenian daughters, the eldest (Melisinda or Milicent) being a famous queen, married to Fulk of Anjou, under whom Palestine reached the summit of its prosperity as a Christian kingdom. Fulk[503] reigned from 1131 to 1144, and left two sons, of whom the elder, Baldwin III., was a gallant youth, long held in ward by his crowned mother Melisinda. She founded the Benedictine nunnery at Bethany--of which the tower still dominates the hamlet--in 1147, and rebuilt the Church of the Virgin’s Tomb in the last year of her life; for she died at Nâblus on September 11, 1161, and was buried on the stairs leading down to the cave-chapel of this restored church. Her son survived her only five months, and died on February 10, 1162. He was succeeded by his gloomy brother Amaury, who weakened the kingdom by making war on Egypt. His son Baldwin IV.