♦Offers of France to the king.♦ Louis left no stone unturned to divert him from his resolution. He tempted him with the provinces of Silesia and Hungary, to become the property not of the republic but of the king and his heirs, if he would join him against the Empire; ♦French conspiracy against him.♦ and finding him proof against his offers he began a conspiracy to dethrone him. On the assembling of the next Diet (January 27th, 1683) the heat of parties was tremendous. When Leopold’s ambassador, the Count of Walstein, and Palaviccini, the Papal Nuncio, had stated their proposals of alliance, the deputies in the pay of France put in their protest. Besides placing every obstacle in the way of public business, they appealed to the outside public. Pamphlets appeared daily in which the policy of the king was warmly condemned. The selfish cabinet of Austria, which had refused to save Poland, was declared her eternal enemy, and the nobles were warned that the king could not ally himself with such a court without imbibing its despotic views. ♦Discovered by the king.♦ The opposition gathered strength, and the consequences might have been serious had not the king fortunately intercepted some letters of the French ambassador, which disclosed the details of his plot (March). He read these letters in full Diet, and their contents excited the utmost indignation. The ambassador boasted that through Morstyn, the Grand Treasurer, he knew all the secrets of the cabinet, that he had bought over numbers of the principal nobles, whose names he gave, and that the nation was so venal that he felt certain of destroying the league. He added that the king had rejected all his offers, but that he trusted to make him powerless. Among the nobles mentioned were Jablonowski, now Grand General of Poland, and Sapieha, who, since the death of Michael Paz, had been Grand General of Lithuania. The latter belonged to a family upon which the king had showered his favours. ♦His tact.♦ John used this information with wonderful tact. He at once declared that the ambassador, to show his zeal to his master, had evidently slandered the grandees; Morstyn alone, whose guilt was proved by a letter in his own hand, deserved the punishment of treason. The king concluded by saying that he trusted the Diet would help him to show the French king that the Polish nation was not altogether venal. The speech was received with shouts of applause, and the suspected nobles were now foremost in supporting the king. A similar change took place in the nation, and the French ambassador found it unsafe to go abroad without an escort. The Grand Treasurer would have been brought to trial if he had not escaped to France.