Punishment Trials (Napoleon's World)

The Punishment Trials refer to a series of trials held in 1961 and 1962 in London, where a commission appointed by Prime Minister Charles Morgan and by proxy Parliament would indict and try men considered to have committed "egregious and barbaric crimes against the English people" during the Anarchy. They were modelled upon the Guttendorp Commission that tried purported criminals of war following the French Civil War. In all, eleven men were indicted and eventually convicted, and seven of them were sentenced to death. The trials had a mixed response in England, where many civilians felt that the government was taking a revanchist attitude towards its enemies during the civil war, and the policy of amnesty towards former enemies of the English Republican Army became a major plank in the nascent Labour Party's platform.