George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

To all these dangers from abroad, Charles the Third had added another, by making war on the so-called company of Jesus. Of the prelates of Spain, seven archbishops and twenty-eight bishops, two-thirds of them all, not only approved the exile of the order from his dominions, but recommended its total dissolution; while only one bishop desired to preserve it without reform. With their concurrence, and the support of France and Portugal, he finally extorted the assent of the pope to its abolition. But before the formal act of the see of Rome, on the second of April, 1767, at one and the same hour in Spain, in the north and south of Africa, in Asia, in America, in all the islands of the monarchy, the royal decree was opened by officials of the crown, enjoining them immediately to take possession of its houses, to chase its members from their convents, and within twentyfour hours to transport them as prisoners to some appointed harbor. These commands were followed with precision in Spain, where the Jesuit priests, without regard to their birth, education, or age, were sent on board ships to land where they could. They were executed less perfectly in Mexico and California, and still less so along the South Pacific coast and the waters of the La Plata.

But the power of Spain in her colonies had been promoted by the unwearied activity of the Jesuits. Their banishment weakened her authority over Spanish emigrants, and still more confused the minds of the rude progeny of the aborigines. In Paraguay,