The few Crusaders who had preserved any feelings of humanity had not the power to check the fury of an army who thought they were avenging outraged religion. Three hundred Saracens, who had taken refuge on the platform of the mosque of Omar, were immolated on the day after the conquest, in spite of the prayers of Tancred, who had sent them his standard as a safeguard, and was indignant to find that so little respect was paid to the laws of honour and chivalry.[185] The Saracens who had retreated to the fortress of David were almost the only persons that escaped death. Raymond accepted their capitulation, and had the good fortune and the glory to have it executed; but this act of humanity appeared so strange to the greater part of the Crusaders, that they expressed less admiration for the generosity of the count de St. Gilles than contempt for his avarice.[186] The carnage did not cease until the end of a week. Such of the Saracens as had been able to elude pursuit during this period were reserved for the service of the army. The Oriental and Latin historians agree in stating the number of the Mussulmans slain in Jerusalem to have been more than seventy thousand. The Jews met with no more mercy than the Saracens. The soldiers set fire to the synagogue in which they had taken refuge, and all perished in the flames. But it began to be feared that the bodies heaped up in the public places, and the blood which had flooded the mosques and the streets might give rise to pestilential diseases, and the leaders gave orders that the streets should be cleansed, and that a spectacle which, now fury and fanaticism were satisfied, must have been odious to them, should be removed from before their eyes. Some Mussulman prisoners, who had only escaped the sword of the conquerors to fall into a horrible state of slavery, were ordered to bury the disfigured bodies of their friends and brothers. “They wept,” says Robert the Monk,[187] “and transported the carcases out of Jerusalem.” They were assisted in this melancholy duty by the soldiers of Raymond, who, having entered last into the city, had not had a large share of the plunder, and sought to increase it by a close search of the bodies of the Saracens.