The moment has arrived. The Americans are, at last, revolting. And it was far from inevitable. What made sure it would happen was the brainlessness of British leaders, most specifically in this episode, General Thomas Gage in America and Lord North in London.

Gage landed troops in Boston to restore order. But putting an army amongst a resentful civilian population was never going to end well. And it didn’t. The killing of a child and then the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre kept the resentments alive.

But still a spark was needed. And that would be provided, as we’ll see in the next episode, by Lord North.

Illustration: The Landing of British troops in Boston, 1768. Public domain

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License