DA: I agree Moses should have tried a private meeting. They even did have a private meeting (during the darkness?) where they talk and reminisce and you can see Rameses falling into the habits of their brotherhood and listening and considering it, but then rejecting it because he'd already publically committed to refusing.

Making the demands in public undermined his authority as Pharaoh, which was especially bad as we'd already seen he'd felt insecure about it before Moses left and Moses should have known that.