Burial site for the Victims of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770. The five men killed in the incident were Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, Crispus Attucks, and Patrick Carr. At the end of the Seven Years War (known in America as the French and Indian War) between England and France, the British government enacted a series of taxes to pay for the costs of winning the war. These taxes were extremely unpopular in the colonies, and in the British colony of Massachusetts, resistance to the taxes took the form of public protest and angry confrontations with tax collectors. In 1768, Governor Francis Bernard, fearful of public unrest, asked for and was sent 4,000 troops, to maintain order. Due to lack of barracks, the soldiers were often quartered in the homes of Boston citizens. A colonial resistance group, the Sons of Liberty, formed to oppose the occupation, fueling British fears of a potential rebellion. During the winter of 1769-1770, groups of citizens harassed the soldiers at every opportunity, pelting them with snowballs, and engaging off duty soldiers in fistfights. On March 5, 1770, a sentry with the 29th Regiment of Foot, Private Hugh White, was guarding the Boston Custom House, when a group of men began to pelt him with snowballs. The incident quickly escalated into a confrontation with the angry citizens threatening the soldier with sticks and rocks, and he, in turn, called for the guard force stationed nearby. Captain Thomas Preston, commander of the guard, came to the sentry's aid with a squad of soldiers. The crowd continued to close in on the soldiers, cursing them and taunting the soldiers to shoot them. Losing control, the soldiers then fired into the mob, killing three persons initially, and wounding eight others, two of whom died later. Captain Preston and his men were charged with murder, and defended by local lawyer John Adams (a patriot who later became President of the US), most are acquitted when it is shown that Preston did not order his troops to fire into the crowd, and had tried to control them. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter, and dismissed from the Army. The Sons of Liberty used the incident as propaganda to further incite people against British rule by falsely telling the story that the British soldiers deliberately attacked peaceful, unarmed people, massacring them. This incident was one of the first major events that led to the American Revolution.