British military officials concluded that the performance of colonial soldiers in the French and Indian War and Pontiac’s Rebellion had been unsatisfactory and made it necessary to employ regular British army soldiers to defend North America. Threats still existed from remaining pockets of unrepentant French and Spanish settlers, and particularly from the Indian tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains. General Jeffrey Amherst requested 5,000 soldiers to help build and maintain a chain of forts that would stretch across the Great Lakes and Ohio River, serving as a protective shield against potential threats. Parliament, after years of neglecting the colonies, showed intense interest in the situation and authorized funds for 10,000 soldiers. Reaction in the colonies was largely negative, except from royal officials and their loyalist supporters. Fear of a standing army was innate in many colonial minds and exceeded only by an aversion to taxation by an outside source, which indeed was the Grenville solution to paying for the soldiers.