The Commander-in-Chief's Guard, commonly known as Washington's Life Guard, was a unit of the Continental Army that protected General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. Formed in 1776, the Guard was with Washington in all of his battles. It was disbanded in 1783 at the end of the war. The Commander-in-Chief's Guard was authorized on 11 March 1776 and organized the next day at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The purpose of the unit was to protect General Washington as well as the money and official papers of the Continental Army. General Washington directed the formation of a "corps of sober, intelligent, and reliable men". The unit was initially created by selecting four men from each Continental Army regiment present at the siege of Boston. The strength of the unit was usually 180 men, although this was temporarily increased to 250 during the winter of 1779–80, when the army was encamped at Morristown, New Jersey, in close proximity to the British Army.