In France, conditions were still worse. During a reign of fifty-six years, Louis XV trampled on all the decencies of public and private life. He was the degraded slave of Pompadour, a woman who dictated his policies, named his ministers, appointed his ambassadors, made at least one of his cardinals, and even directed his armies. Her power was so great that the Empress of Austria felt compelled to address her as "ma bonne amie." She was succeeded by du Barry who was taken from a house of debauch. The coarseness of this creature deprived her of much of the power possessed by her predecessor, except that Louis was her slave. It was Pompadour who brought Choiseul out of obscurity to reward him for revealing a plot to make one of his own cousins supplant her in her relations to the king. For that, he was made ambassador to Rome in 1754, where during the last illness of Benedict XIV, he was planning with other ambassadors to interpose the royal vetos in the election of Benedict's successor. Before that event, however, he was sent to Vienna, from which post, he rose successively until he had France completely in his grasp. The "Family Compact" or union of all the Bourbon princes, which was a potent instrument in the war against the Jesuits, was his conception. He was a friend of La Chalotais, one of the arch-enemies of the Society, and was an intimate of Voltaire, whose property at Ferney he exempted from taxation. The spirit of his religious policy consisted in what was then called "an enlightened despotism," or a systematic hatred of everything Christian.
Crétineau-Joly describes him as follows: "He was the ideal gentleman of the eighteenth century. He was controlled by its unbelief, its airs, its vanity, its nobility, its dissoluteness, insolence, courage, and by a levity which would have sacrificed the peace of Europe for an epigram. He was all for show; settling questions which he had merely skimmed over and sniffing the incense offered to him by the Encyclopedists, but shuddering at the thought that they might fancy themselves his teachers. He would admit no master either on the throne or below it. His life's ambition was to govern France and to apply to that sick nation the remedies he had dreamed would restore her to health. He could not do so except by winning public opinion, and for that purpose, he flattered the philosophers, captured the parliament, cringed to Madame de Pompadour and made things pleasant for the king. When he had gathered everyone on his side, he set himself to hunting the Jesuits."
On the throne of Portugal sat Joseph I, of whom, Father Weld in his "Suppression of the Society of Jesus" (p. 91) writes: "Joseph I united all those points of character which were calculated to make him a tool in the hands of a man who had the audacity to assume the command and astuteness to represent himself as a most humble and faithful servant. Timid and weak, like Louis XV, he was easily filled with fear for the safety of his own person, and, to a degree never reached by the French king, was incapable of exerting his own will when advised by any one who had succeeded in gaining his confidence. To this mental weakness, he also added the lamentable failing of being a slave to his own voluptuous passions. It required but little insight into human nature to see that a terrible scourge was in store for Portugal. To the evils of misrule, it pleased God to add other terrible calamities which overwhelmed the country in misery that cannot be described. The licentious habits of his father, John V had already impaired the national standard of morals. The nobility had ceased to visit their estates and had degenerated into a race of mere courtiers. The interests of the common people were neglected by the Government, and almost their only friends were the religious orders." (The Catholic Encyclopedia, XII, 304).
The real master of Portugal in those days was Don Sebastioa José Carvalho, better known as Pombal — the gigantic ex-soldier who, despite his herculean strength and reckless daring, was ignored when there was question of promotion. He left the army in disgust, and by the influence of the queen, Maria of Austria, and that of his uncle, the court chaplain, was sent as ambassador to London and then to Vienna. In both places he was a disastrous failure, probably on account of his brutal manners. Returning to Lisbon, he paid the most obsequious attention to churchmen, especially to the king's confessor, the Jesuit Carbone, who kept continually recommending him until John V bade him never to mention Carvalho's name. To the Marquis of Valenza, who also urged Carvalho's promotion, John said: "that man has hairs in his heart and he comes from a cruel and vindictive family." At the death of John and the retirement of the aged Motta, the former prime minister, the queen regent, who was fond of Carvalho's Austrian wife made Pombal prime minister: and Moreira, another Jesuit confessor, was insistent in proclaiming his wonderful ability. Never was departure from the principles and rules of the religious state by meddling with things outside the sphere of duty so terribly punished. Father Weld, however, when speaking of Moreira, who was a prisoner in Jonquiera, has a note which says that "Moreira protested to the end that he had never uttered a word in favor of Carvalho."
No sooner was Carvalho in power than the violence of his character began to display itself in the sanguinary measures he employed to suppress the brigandage that was rife in the country and even in the capital itself. The nobility, especially, were marked out for punishment; and when public criticism began to be heard, he issued furious edicts against the calumniators of the administration. He suppressed with terrible severity a rising at Porto against a wine-company which he had established there, and began a series of attacks on the most eminent personages of the kingdom. He dismissed in disgrace the minister of the navy, Diego de Mendoza; and de la Cerda, the ambassador to France; as well as John de Braganza, the Marquis of Marialva and many others. He gave the highest positions, ecclesiastical and political, to his relatives; forced the king to sign edicts without reading them, some of which made criticism of the government high treason, and he extended their application even to the ordinances of his minister; he silenced the preachers who spoke of public disasters as punishment of God; and forbade them to publish anything without his approbation. Though he reorganized the navy, he left the army a wreck, lest the nobles might control it. There was no public press in Portugal during his administration, and the mails were distributed only once a week. He encouraged commerce and organized public works, but always to enrich himself and his family. He flung thousands into prison without even the pretence of a trial, and at his downfall in 1782 says the "Encyclopédie catholique," "out of the subterraneous dungeons there issued eight hundred of his victims, the remnants of the nine thousand who had survived their entombment; and a government order was issued declaring that none of the victims living or dead had been guilty of the crimes imputed to them." This was the man who was declared by the Philosophers of the eighteenth century to be "the illuminator of his nation."
Nor was there much comfort to be hoped for in Austria. Maria Theresa was undoubtedly pious, kind hearted and devoted to her people, but as ruler is very much overrated. Her advisers were commonly the men who were plotting the ruin of all existing governments — Jansenists and Freethinkers. Even her court physicians were close allies of the schismatical Jansenist Archbishop of Utrecht, and they made liberal and constant use of the great esteem they enjoyed at Vienna to foment hostility to the Holy See. They even succeeded in persuading the empress, though they were only laymen, to appoint a commission for the reform of theological teaching in the seminaries; and one of their friends, de Stock, was appointed to direct the work. The Jesuits were removed from the professorships of divinity and canon law; lay professors were appointed in their stead by the politicians, in spite of the protests of the bishops; and books were published in direct opposition to orthodox teaching. At this time appeared the famous treatise known as "Febronius" by Hontheim, a suffragan bishop of Treves, who thus prepared for the coming of Joseph II. The universities were quickly infected with his doctrines; and new schools were established at Bonn and Münster out of the money of suppressed convents in order to accelerate the spread of the poison. When the University of Cologne protested, it was punished for its temerity.
It goes without saying that if Maria Theresa, with her strong Catholic instincts, was so easy to control, it was not difficult for the statesmen who governed France, Spain, Portugal and Italy to carry out their nefarious schemes against the Church. The Free-masons were hard at work, and immoral and atheistic literature was spread broadcast. It had already made ravages among the aristocracy and the middle classes, and now the grades below were being deeply gangrened. Cardinal Pacca writing about a period immediately subsequent to this, says: "In the time of my two nunciatures at Cologne and Lisbon, I had occasion to become acquainted with the greater part of the French émigrés, and I regret to say that, with the exception of a few gentlemen from the Provinces, they all made open profession of the philosophical maxims which had brought about the catastrophe of which they were the first victims. They admitted, at times, in their lucid moments, that the overturning of the altar had dragged down the throne; and that it was the pretended intellectuality of the Freethinkers that had introduced into the minds of the people the new ideas of liberty and equality, which had such fatal consequence for them. Nevertheless, they persisted in their errors and even endeavored to spread them both orally and by the most abominable publications. God grant that these seeds of impiety, flung broadcast on a still virgin soil, may not produce more bitter and more poisonous fruit for the Church and the Portuguese monarchy." The editor of the "Memoirs" adds in a note: "They have only too well succeeded in producing the fruit."
"I remember," continues Pacca, "that during my nunciature at Cologne, some of these distinguished "emigrés" determined to have a funeral service for Marie Antoinette, not out of any religious sentiment, but merely to conform to the fashion followed in the courts of Europe. I was invited and was present. The priest who sang the Mass preached the eulogy of the dead queen. In his discourse which did not lack either eloquence or solidity, he enumerated the causes of the French Revolution, and instanced chiefly the irreligious doctrines taught by the philosophy of the period. This undeniable proposition evoked loud murmurs of discontent in the congregation, which was almost exclusively composed of Frenchmen; and when the orator said that Marie Antoinette was one of the first victims of modern philosophy, a voice was heard far down in the church crying out in the most insulting fashion: 'That's not true.'" When laymen who professed to be Catholics were so blind to patent facts and would dare to conduct themselves so disgracefully in a church at a funeral service for their murdered queen, there was no hope of appealing to them to stand up for truth and justice in the political world.
The hierarchy throughout the Church was devoted to the Society, but it could only protest. And hence as soon as the first signs appeared of the determination to destroy the Order, letters and appeals, full of tender affection and of unstinted praise for the victims, poured into Rome from bishops all over the world. There were at least two hundred sent to Clement XIII, but many of them were either lost or purposely destroyed, as soon as the great Pontiff breathed his last. Father Lagomarsni found many of them which he intended to publish but, for one reason or another, did not do so.
Some of these papers, however have been reproduced by de Ravignan, in his "Clément XIII et Clément XIV." They fill more than a hundred pages of his second volume, and he chose only those that came from the most important sees in the Church, such as the three German Archbishoprics of Treves, Cologne and Mayence, whose prelates were prince electors of the empire. There are also appeals from Cardinal Lamberg the Prince-Bishop of Passau, from the Primate of Germany, the Archbishop of Salzburg, the Primates of Bohemia, of Hungary, and of Ireland. The Archbishop of Armagh says "he lived with the Jesuits from childhood, and loved and admired them." There are letters from the Cardinal Archbishop of Turin; the Archbishops of Messina, Monreale, Sorrento, Seville, Compostella, Tarragona, and even from the far north, — from Norway and Denmark, where the vicar-Apostolic begs the Pope to save those distant countries from the ruin which will certainly fall on them if the Jesuits are withdrawn. They are all dated between the years 1758 and 1760. The Polish Bishop of Kiew begs the Pope to stand "like a wall of brass" against the enemies of the Society, which he calls a religiosissimus cætus. For the Bishops of Lombez, it is the dilectissima Societas Jesu, quæ concussa, confugit in sinum nostrum — "the most beloved Society of Jesus which, when struck, rushed to our arms." The Bishop of Narbonne declares: "It is known and admitted through all the world that the Society of Jesus, which is worthy of all respect, has never ceased to render services to the Church in every part of the world. There never was an order whose sons have fulfilled the duties of the sacred ministry with more burning, pure and intelligent zeal. Nothing could check their zeal; and the most furious storm only displayed the constancy and solidity of their virtue." Du Guesclin denounces the persecution as "atrocious; the like of which was never heard of before." "I omit," says the Archbishop of Auch, "an infinite number of things which redound to their praise." The Bishop of Malaga recalls how Clement VIII described them as "the right arm of the Holy See." The Archbishop of Salzburg bitterly resents "the calumnious and defamatory charges against them." And, so, in each one of these communications to the Holy Father, there is nothing but praise for the victims and indignant denunciations of their executioners.