On September 27th 1792 the Paris newspaper La Feuille Villageoise (‘The Village Sheet’) opposed the execution of the king, urging its readers to simply depose him:
“Louis Bourbon, Louis XVI, or rather Louis the Last, still lives in the Temple tower. The place is arranged so as to be more suitable for him and his family. His calmness, or rather his dumb apathy, remains the same. He seems to be no more aware of his misfortunes than of his crimes.
It is likely that people will forget him in his prison, until victory has forced the enemy to abandon him either to justice or to national clemency. The scheme to bring the royal family to trial would be, at the present time, a fatal one.
This is the advice of all the English who have embraced our cause. A king hounded, they say, no longer has supporters; a king killed arouses sympathy, and this compassion gives his family defenders. Tarquin had no successors but Charles I still has them.”