Marie Joséphine of Savoy future king of Sardinia) was married to her sister-in-law Princess Clotilde of France in 1775. Her eldest brother-in-law, Dauphin Louis Auguste (the future Louis XVI of France), had married Marie Antoinette one year earlier. Marie Joséphine was by view of rank and connections deemed very suitable for a marriage to a French prince, and she had been regarded as a suitable bride of the Dauphin prior to his marriage in 1770. The marriage was supported by Madame du Barry, who wished to create an ally within the royal family and who the king allowed to form the household of the
Marie Antoinette ideas and her belief in the absolute power of monarchs were based on France's long established tradition of the divine right of kings. On 18 April, as the royal family prepared to leave for Saint-Cloud to attend Easter mass celebrated by a refractory priest, a crowd, soon joined by the "Garde nationale" (disobeying Lafayette's orders), prevented their departure from Paris, prompting Marie Antoinette to declare to Lafayette that she and her family were no longer free. This incident fortified her in her determination to leave Paris for personal and political reasons, not alone, but with her family. Even the king,