One cloud rested on the horizon when Lawrence Ricci became General; but even the most timid and despondent observer could not have ventured to suggest that he was destined to be the last successor of Ignatius. It had been proved to the satisfaction of the Spanish and Portuguese courts that the Jesuits had inspired the revolt in Paraguay, and Pombal had begun his campaign against the Society. The accession of Clement XIII. in July reassured the Jesuits, but in September of that year the news came of the attempt to assassinate the King of Portugal, and a few months later a number of the leading Portuguese Jesuits were in jail. From that moment the doom of the fathers was sealed in Portugal, and their efforts were chiefly directed to restricting the contagious area. Clement was encouraged to resist the Portuguese, and the Spanish court was induced to regard Pombal as a slanderer. In France, however, the famous Lavalette case had recently occurred, and a very ominous wave of indignation against the Jesuits was rising. Choiseul was now known to be leagued with Pombal in hostility to the Society.
Ricci, a Florentine noble by birth, a man of quiet and cultivated taste, was not an ideal ruler for such a period, but as the clouds gathered thicker he threw all his energy into the combat. Before the end of the year 1759 he had to make provision for the thousands of Portuguese Jesuits whom Pombal cynically flung upon the shores of Italy. In the following year the French courts began to condemn the Society to pay the debts of Lavalette, and in 1761 the Parlement of Paris condemned the Society and began the work of repression. In the fiery controversy which now filled all the Catholic countries of Europe every questionable episode in the history of the Society, and probably much that had been added to the historical facts, was discussed and advertised. Myriads of pamphlets fed the sensations of the people, and for the first time since the early years of Ignatius the Jesuits cowered before the storm of obloquy. In 1764, Louis XV. signed the decree for the abolition of the Society in France, and by 1767 the Italian provinces were once more swamped with crowds of fugitives.
Charles III. of Spain had so far firmly resisted the arguments of Pombal, but in the spring of 1766 the Jesuits of Madrid had drawn on themselves the suspicion of having inspired a revolt against the royal authority, and it would be reported to Ricci that the monarch was sombre and inaccessible. As the year proceeded (and, as we now know, Aranda completed his case against the order), increasingly gloomy messages would come from the Spanish court, and in the early days of April 1767 the news came from the coast that 6000 Spanish Jesuits were tossing homeless on the waters. Taking the colonies into account, the Society had now been destroyed in by far the greater part of the Christian world, and a stupendous amount of its property had been confiscated. Moreover, it was now known that the French, Spanish, and Portuguese were pressing the Pope to abolish the Society; and, at least from the middle of 1767, the prospect of that terrible contingency was discussed throughout the clerical world at Rome.