The organization of the Jesuits showed the military instincts of their founder. To the three usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was added a fourth vow of special allegiance to the pope. The members were to be carefully trained during a long novitiate and were to be under the personal direction of a general, resident in Rome. Authority and obedience were stressed by the society. Then, too, St. Ignatius Loyola understood that the Church was now confronted with conditions of war rather than of peace: accordingly he directed that his brothers should not content themselves with prayer and works of peace, with charity and local benevolence, but should adapt themselves to new circumstances and should strive in a multiplicity of ways to restore all things in the Catholic Church. Thus it happened that the Jesuits, from the very year of their establishment, rushed to the front in the religious conflict of the sixteenth century. In the first place, they sought to enlighten and educate the young. As schoolmasters they had no equals in Europe for many years. No less a scholar and scientist than Lord Francis Bacon said of the Jesuit teaching that "nothing better has been put in practice." Again, by their wide learning and culture, no less than by the unimpeachable purity of their lives, they won back a considerable respect for the Catholic clergy. As preachers, too, they earned a high esteem by the clearness and simplicity of their sermons and instruction. It was in the mission field, however, that the Jesuits achieved the most considerable results. They were mainly responsible for the recovery of Poland after that country had almost become Lutheran. They similarly conserved the Catholic faith in Bavaria and in the southern Netherlands. They insured a respectable Catholic party in Bohemia and in Hungary. They aided considerably in maintaining Catholicism in Ireland. At the hourly risk of their lives, they ministered to their fellow-Catholics in England under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. And what the Catholic Church lost in numbers through the defection of the greater part of northern Europe was compensated for by Jesuit missions among the teeming millions in India and China, among the Huron and Iroquois tribes of North America, and among the aborigines of Brazil and Paraguay. No means of influence, no source of power, was neglected that would win men to religion and to the authority of the bishop of Rome. Politics and agriculture were utilized as well as literature and science. The Jesuits were confessors of kings in Europe and apostles of the faith in Asia and America. [Sidenote: Political and Economic Factors in the Catholic Reformation]