The party of the nobility was at last victorious. At the Diet assembled at Hatvan 14,000 nobles assumed such a menacing attitude towards the government that all its members were compelled to give in their resignations, and Stephen Verböczy was elected by the triumphant party palatine of the kingdom. John Szapolyai became treasurer. To what extent the treasury was better managed under his direction it would be difficult to determine, for the sad fact remained that the treasury still remained empty, and that the new treasurer was constantly adding to the number of his estates and increasing his domain. The magnates as well as the burghers clearly saw that nothing had been gained by the change effected in the administration. They therefore combined to restore the former government, and were headed by the great nobles who had been deprived of their offices—Báthory, the late palatine, and Alexius Thurzó. The league is known in Hungarian history under the name of the “_Kalandos_” Society—the word “kalandos” having in the Magyar language the meaning of “adventurous,” but in truth the word was derived from the “_Kalends_,” the society being in the habit of meeting on the “Kalends,” or first of each month. This patriotic band of would-be saviors of their country went on with their intrigues even after the news had arrived of another Turkish inroad threatening the country. The league at last succeeded. At the Diet convoked in Buda they reinstated their party in power. Verböczy himself was not slow in perceiving that he had been used by Szapolyai merely as a tool, and, refusing to be an instrument in his hands, he resigned the dignity of which he had been already deprived by the Diet. In order to save his life he fled to Transylvania, but he could not prevent the Diet from declaring him to be an enemy to his country. Báthory occupied again his former position of a palatine, and announced his programme in these brief words: “We are not the cause of the ruin of the country”—a very strange assurance on the part of the councillors and leading statesmen of Louis II., coming too at a time when they were menaced on all sides by approaching perils. This conduct occasioned the papal nuncio’s remark that “they were playing comedy with their mutual protests.”