Up until the deposition of the royal family in August 1792 and his own fall from grace, Barnave remained the most important advisor and supporter of the queen inside France. Marie Antoinette was ready to work with Barnave as long as he was ready to follow her orders, which Barnave did to a large extent and over a long period of time. Goaded by the queen, Barnave convinced Lafayette to use force against the radical elements of the French Revolution. As a result, tens of thousands of political opponents of Marie Antoinette were either killed, exiled or sent to prison. Rather than cooperating with Lafayette, Marie Antoinette refused to be helped by him and played a decisive role in defeating him in his aims to become the mayor of Paris in October 1791.[183]
Barnave and the moderates made up about 260 lawmakers in the new Legislative Assembly; the radicals numbered around 136, and the rest (around 350) were in the middle. At first, the majority was with Barnave, but the queen's policy led to the radicalization of the assembly and the moderates lost control of the legislative process. The moderate government collapsed in April 1792 and a radical ministry headed by the Girondins was formed. Worse than that, the assembly passed a series of laws concerning the Church, the aristocracy and the formation of new national guard units which were vetoed by the king on the orders of the queen. The radical Girondin government who was formed in April 1792 controlled the legislative assembly with 330 members, while Marie Antoinette and Barnave were not supported by more than 120 members.The two strongest members of that government were Jean Marie Roland, the husband of Madame Roland, who was minister of interior, and General Dumouriez, the minister of foreign affairs. Dumouriez sympathized with the royal couple and wanted to save them. However, he was rebuffed by the queen, who wanted to crush the Revolution by counting on the support of foreign powers.[184][185]
Marie Antoinette's actions in refusing to collaborate with the Girondin radical ministry who were in power between April and June 1792 led the Girondins to denounce the treason of the Austrian comity, a direct allusion to the Queen. After Madame Roland sent a letter to the King denouncing the Queen's role in these matters, the King sacked the Government on the order of Marie Antoinette, losing his majority in the Assembly. Dumouriez resigned and refused a post in any new government. At this point, most of the French people and political parties turned against the royal authority. Marie Antoinette even collaborated with Madame du Barry using the Duke of Brissac, the leader of the constitutional guard and the lover of Madame du Barry, as an intermediate to fund and prepare a counterrevolution in the War in the Vendee. This counterrevolution would interrupt in 1793, causing hundred of thousands of deaths and bring the Revolution to a quick end in 1799. In addition, Marie Antoinette pushed the king to refuse the new laws voted by the Legislative Assembly in 1792.[186] and continued her plots with the foreign powers by pushing them to issue the Declaration of Pillnitz in August 1791, which threatened invasion of France. This led in turn to a French declaration of war in April 1792 and the French Revolutionary War and the popular revolution of August 1792 which ended the monarchy.[187]
On 20 June, "a mob of terrifying aspect" broke in to the Tuileries, made the King wear the bonnet rouge (red Phrygian cap) to show his loyalty to France, insulted Marie Antoinette, accused her of betraying France and threatened her life. In consequence, the queen ordered Fersen first to push foreign powers to activate their invasion of France and second to issue a manifesto in which the foreign powers threatened to destroy Paris if anything happened to the queen and her family. This manifesto triggered the events of 10 August [188] when an armed mob, on the verge of forcing its way into the Tuileries Palace, forced the King and the royal family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly. An hour and a half later, the palace was invaded by the mob, who massacred the Swiss Guards.[189][190] On 13 August, the royal family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple in the Marais under conditions considerably harsher than their previous confinement in the Tuileries.[191]
A week later, many of the royal family's attendants, among them the princesse de Lamballe, were taken in for interrogation by the Paris Commune. Transferred to the La Force prison, the princesse de Lamballe was a victim of the September Massacres, killed on 3 September. Her head was affixed on a pike and marched through the city; Marie Antoinette did not see this but fainted upon learning of it.[192][193]
On 21 September, the fall of the monarchy was officially declared, and the National Convention became the legal authority of France. The royal family was re-styled as the non-royal "Capets". Preparations began for the trial of the king in a court of law.[194]
Charged with undermining the First French Republic, Louis was separated from his family and tried in December. He was found guilty by the Convention, led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage. A month later, he was condemned to death by guillotine and executed on 21 January 1793.[195][196]
The queen, now called the "Widow Capet", plunged into deep mourning and refused to eat or do any exercise. She proclaimed her son as Louis XVII hoping to rule France in his name as Regent; the comte de Provence, in exile, recognised his nephew as the new King of France. The royalists, especially those preparing the insurrection in Vendee and the clergy, supported Marie Antoinette, who wished to used this support in order to free herself from prison and subsequently crush the revolution, counting on a civil war inside France and the pressure of foreign armies and powers to achieve this. The queen could count on the sympathy of many conservative factions and social-religious groups who were turning against the Revolution, and on many wealthy figures who were ready to corrupt republican officials in order to facilitate the escape of the queen, which was a necessary step in order to form a new legal political entity.[197] While all these plots and activities failed in their attempts to change the fate of the prisoner queen and her family nevertheless they formed a network of royal activists strong enough to corrupt republican officials, to launch the war in Vendee in the name of the son of Marie Antoinette Louis seventeen and to defend the Catholic Religion by giving a true and strong popular base for the royalists and other conservatives whose activity in the long run will undermine the Revolution and oblige Napoleon to restore the Roman Catholic Church in France and Europe.[198] Marie Antoinette was treated badly by her jailors who smoked in her face and insulted her. She was imprisoned in a dark cell with few luxuries except her books and high heels. The queen had little social contact with no privacy, she was allowed to see her family on a very limited basis. Her health deteriorated through inactivity and forced restraint, she found difficulty in walking and developed tuberculosis and possibly uterine cancer, and she suffered frequent hemorrhages.[199] Marie Antoinette wanted to escape at all costs; however the toulan plot which consisted of disguising the queen as one of her guards because of her very big size failed due to the massive presence of guards, to the great desperation and sadness of the queen as we know from her letters.[200]
After Louis' death, Marie Antoinette's fate became a central question of the National Convention. While some continually advocated for her death, others proposed exchanging her for French prisoners of war or for a ransom from the Holy Roman Emperor. Thomas Paine advocated exile to America.[201] Starting in April, however, a Committee of Public Safety was formed, and men such as Jacques Hébert were beginning to call for Antoinette's trial; by the end of May, the Girondins had been chased from power and arrested.[202] Other calls were made to "retrain" the Dauphin, to make him more pliant to revolutionary ideas. To carry this out, the eight-year-old Louis Charles was separated from Antoinette on 3 July and given to the care of a cobbler named Antoine Simon.[203] On 1 August, following various plots for her escape, Marie Antoinette was taken restrained with her hands behind her back out of the tower under a lot of insults, she was pushed and her head was injured. The queen was moved to an isolated underground cell in the Conciergerie as Prisoner No. 280. This period of time was the most difficult period of her captivity. She was always attended by guards who restrained her, did not allow her any privacy and treated her very badly; an attempt to escape was foiled due to the inability to corrupt all the guards, to fear and also to the large numbers of iron doors which totally cut the underground cell where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned from the rest of the prison.[204] In her cell she was attended by Rosalie Lamorlière and at at least once received a Catholic priest.[205][206]
She was finally tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 14 October. Some historians believe the outcome of the trial had been decided in advance by the Committee of Public Safety around the time the Carnation Plot was uncovered.[207] She was given less than one day to prepare her defence. Among the accusations, many previously published in the libelles, were orchestrating orgies in Versailles, sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria, plotting to kill the Duke of Orléans, orchestrating the massacre of the Swiss Guards in 1792, declaring her son to be the new King of France, and—by her son Louis Charles himself (pushed by radical elements who controlled him)—of sexually abusing him. This last accusation drew an emotional response from Mari