Upon the accession of Louis XVI., a clean sweep was made of the licentious and discredited agents of Mme. du Barry, and a new ministry was created. The former mistress, with her lover, the Duc d'Aiguillon, was banished, although Mme. Adelaïde succeeded in having Maurepas, uncle of the Duc d'Aiguillon, made minister. Marie Antoinette had little interest in the appointment after she failed to gain the honor for her favorite, De Choiseul, who had negotiated her marriage. The queen then proceeded to carry out her long-cherished wishes for society dinners at which she could preside. Her every act, however, was governed by inflexible laws of etiquette, some of which she most impatiently suffered, but many of which she impatiently put aside. With this manner of entertaining begins her reign as queen of taste and fashion, for Louis XVI. left to his wife the responsibility of organizing all entertainments, and her aspiration was to make the court of France the most splendid in the world. From that time on, all her movements, her apparel, her manners, to the minutest detail, were imitated by the court ladies. This custom, of course, led to reckless extravagance among the nobility, for whenever Marie Antoinette appeared in a new gown, which was almost daily, the ladies of the nobility must perforce copy it. Tidings of these extravagances of the queen and her court in time reached the empress-mother in Vienna. Marie Thérèse severely reproached her daughter, writing: "My daughter, my dear daughter, the first queen—is she to grow like this? The idea is insupportable to me." Yet, "to speak the exact truth," said her counsellor, Mercy, when writing to the empress-mother, "there is less to complain of in the evil which exists than in the lack of all the good which might exist." It is chronicled to her credit that all her expenditure was not upon herself alone, but that she was equally lavish when she attempted charity. Her first political act, the removal of Turgot, was disastrous. She thought she was humoring public opinion, which was strongly against the minister on account of his many reforms, but her primary reason was rather one of personal vengeance. Turgot had been openly hostile to her friend and favorite, the Duc de Guines. She was then in the midst of her period of dissipation; "dazzled by the glory of the throne, intoxicated by public approval," she overstepped the bounds of royal propriety, neglecting etiquette and forgetting that she was secretly hated by the people because of her origin; her greatest error was in forgetting that she was Queen of France and no longer the mere dauphiness.