What was life like for British soldiers before the American Revolution? To begin with, King George III sent hundreds of soldiers to Boston in 1765. The Colonists were forced, by a law
passed by King George, to provide housing to soldiers for protecting colonists against natives and other enemies
of England . “These men were often despised by their own officers and the colonies alike. Welcomed in the town,
reviled and always in danger of attack from bands of waterfront thugs always the target of shouted insults when
on parade, subject to disease, sullenly angry, bored, broke, they lived in the harshest of disciplines.”
(source: "The Day the American Revolution Began").
This shows that soldiers were put through a lot, by not just colonists, but some of their own officers and they're just trying to do their job that they were forced by the king to do. These British soldiers were not well respected at home or in the colonies. As long as you could stand and shoot a gun, you could be a soldier, and because of the difficulty finding men to join the army, most them were criminals trying to avoid their punishment.
All of this tension led to violence on March 5, 1770, when soldiers and Colonists clashed in what became the Boston Massacre.
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