Some of the accusations made against Marie Antoinette in the Act of
Accusation for her trial, drawn up by Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville:
- That she drained the French treasury in order to ‘satisfy inordinate
pleasures and to pay the agents of her criminal intrigues,’ and that
she sent millions to her brothers in Austria.- That she organized
the ‘orgy of October 1st, 1789,’ and encouraged the soldiers to trample
the national cockade and engage in ‘counter-revolutionary excesses.’- That
she, along with Louis XVI, ordered both counter-revolutionary and
anti-monarchy pamphlets to be distributed throughout France in order to
instigate foreign powers to go to war with France.- That she organized a famine in October 1789 in order to weaken the revolution.
- That
she opened and locked the door of the Tuileries through which she, the
king and the royal family passed through during the flight to Montmedy.- That
she conspired with the marquis de Lafayette to forbid anyone without
permission to leave or enter the palace, in order to prevent people from
knowing about ‘midnight orgies’ against liberty.
That she, along with her secret midnight councils, planned and ordered the Champs de Mars massacre.- That
it was her advice (and that of her Austrian council) which persuaded
Louis XVI to use his veto, particularly on the laws regarding priests
and emigres.- That she plotted ‘with her perfidious agents’ the
violence on August 10th, 1792, plied the Swiss Guards with drink to keep
them ‘in a state of drunkenness,’ and personally bit gun cartridges to
‘excite those in her interest’ the night of August 9th.- That she ‘prostituted herself’ with her son, Louis Charles.