The suppression of the Society of Jesus was the removal of all members of the Jesuits from most of Western Europe and their respective colonies beginning in 1759 along with the abolition of the order by the Holy See in 1773; the papacy acceded to said anti-Jesuit demands without much resistance. The Jesuits were serially expelled from the Portuguese Empire (1759), France (1764), the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire (1767) and Austria, and Hungary (1782).
The Marquis of Pombal, Portugal's prime-minister at the time, oversaw the suppression of the Jesuits in Portugal and its empire. Painting by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1766.
Charles III of Spain, who ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish realms
Motín de Esquilache, Madrid, attributed to Francisco de Goya (c. 1766, 1767)
Manuel de Roda, adviser to Carlos III, who brought together an alliance of those opposed to the Jesuits
D. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal and 1st Count of Oeiras, known as the Marquis of Pombal, was a Portuguese despotic statesman and diplomat who effectively ruled the Portuguese Empire from 1750 to 1777 as chief minister to King Joseph I. A strong promoter of the absolute power and influenced by the Age of Enlightenment, Pombal led Portugal's recovery from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and reformed the kingdom's administrative, economic, and ecclesiastical institutions. During his lengthy ministerial career, Pombal accumulated and exercised autocratic power. His cruel persecution of the Portuguese lower classes led him to be known as Nero of Trafaria, a village he ordered to be burned with all its inhabitants inside, after refusing to follow his orders.
The Marquis and his brothers, one the Grand Inquisitor and the other Governor-General of Grão-Pará.
Eleonora Ernestina von Daun, the Marquis of Pombal's second wife.
Portrait of the 1st Marquis of Pombal; Joana do Salitre, 1770.