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 helped orchestrate the Franco-Austrian alliance and Marie Antoinette's marriage, and in exiling his sister, the duchesse de Gramont, one of Marie Antoinette's ladies-in-waiting. Marie Antoinette was persuaded by her husband's aunts to refuse to acknowledge du Barry, which some saw as a political blunder that jeopardised Austria's interests at the French court. Marie Antoinette's mother and the Austrian ambassador to France, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, who sent the Empress secret reports on Marie Antoinette's behavior, pressured Marie Antoinette to speak to Madame du Barry, which she grudgingly agreed to do on New Year's Day 1772. She merely commented to her, "There