Marie Antoinette who had been hesitant, accepted his wife's decision to flee with the help of foreign powers and counter-revolutionary forces. Fersen and Breteuil, who represented her in the courts of Europe, were put in charge of the escape plan, while Marie Antoinette continued her negotiations with some of the moderate leaders of the French Revolution. There had been several plots designed to help the royal family escape, which the queen had rejected because she would not leave without the king, or which had ceased to be viable because of the king's indecision. Once Louis XVI finally did commit to a plan,
Marie Antoinette were given less than one day to prepare her defense. Among the accusations, many previously published in the "libelles", were: orchestrating orgies in Versailles, sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria, planning the massacre of the "gardes françaises" (National Guards) in 1792, declaring her son to be the new king of France, and incest, a charge made by her son Louis Charles, pressured into doing so by the radical elements who controlled him. This last accusation drew an emotional response from Marie Antoinette, who refused to respond to this charge, instead appealing to all mothers present in the