At the commencement of the new reign, there were yet concealed within the empire thirty-three Jesuits, sixteen friars of the three orders, and seven secular priests, who still continued to minister to the faithful with the aid of a great number of native catechists. Seven Jesuits and all the friars but one were in Nagasaki and its environs. Of the other Jesuits, several resided in the other imperial cities where they still found protectors, while the rest travelled from place to place, as their services were needed. Those at Nagasaki were disguised as Portuguese merchants, who were still allowed full liberty to trade; while those in the provinces adopted the shaven crowns and long robes, the ordinary guise of the native bonzes. After a while some of them even ventured to resume the habits of their order, and to preach in public; but this only drew out from the emperor a new and more formal and precise edict. It was accompanied with terrible menaces, such as frightened into apostasy many converts who had hitherto stood out, and even drove some of them, in order to secure favor for themselves, to betray the missionaries, who knew no longer whom to trust. The missionaries sent home lamentable accounts of their own sufferings and those of their converts, and all Catholic Europe resounded with lamentations over this sudden destruction of what had long been considered one of the most flourishing and encouraging provinces of missionary labor, not unmingled, however, with exultations over the courage and firmness of the martyrs.[103] Such, indeed, was the zeal for martyrdom on the part of the Japanese, in which they were encouraged by the friars, and which the Jesuits strove in vain to keep within some reasonable limits, as to lead to many acts of imprudence, by which the individual was glorified, but the church damnified. Henceforth, the missionary letters, which still found their way to Rome, though in diminishing numbers and with decreasing regularity, contain little but horrible accounts of tortures and martyrdoms, mingled, indeed, with abundant exultations over the firmness and even the jubilant spirit with which the victims met their fate, now by crucifixion, now by the axe, and now by fire. Infinite were the prayers, the austerities, the fasts, the penitential exercises, to which the converts resorted in hopes to appease the wrath of Heaven. Even infants at the breast were made to bear their share in them, being allowed to nurse but once a day, in the hope that God would be moved by the cries of these innocents to grant peace to his church. But, though many miraculous things are told of the martyrs, many of them, it is said, distinctly pronouncing the name of Jesus and Mary after their heads were cut off, the persecution continued to rage with unabated fury.