In July 1773, in the month of the dissolution of their Order, the Jesuit priests in Hamburg sent a report to Maria Theresa in Vienna. They described their chapel, their organisation of the liturgical year, and gave information on the salaries of the three priests and their lay helpers. They presented the picture of a religious community living at peace with its neighbours: those problems which had once accompanied the exercise of their pastoral functions had now been smoothed over by their patron, the Imperial Resident. In a city with a total population of about 100,000, the Catholic community amounted to no more than about 1,200 to 1,500 souls: ‘The number of wealthy individuals is small. The number of the middling sort is a little larger, but their numbers are not one thirtieth of those without any wealth at all.’ Servants, labourers, and manual workers, rather than shopkeepers or merchants characterised the Catholic community. Poor and without apparent influence, indeed without any interests to protect where influence might be needed, the Catholics in Hamburg appeared, according to the report of 1773, to lead a peaceful existence, watched over by the Imperial Resident, protected by a pro-Austrian Senate, ministered to by the diligent and devoted Jesuit mission.

And yet the tranquil vision of 1773 belied a stormy past. For despite their relative unimportance, the Catholics had aroused as much animosity as either the Calvinists or the Jews.