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 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