In truth the Royalist army was as hard a one to manage as ever fell to the lot of a general. It was an army of volunteers, supported chiefly by the private means of nobles and gentlemen, who, while scorning to take orders from one another, showed themselves equally averse to taking them from a foreign Prince. It was small, far smaller than that of Essex; undisciplined, badly armed, and continually on the verge of mutiny for want of pay. "It is e'en being, for the most part, without arms, a general of an army of ordnance without a cure, not a gun too, lesse money, much mutiny,"[35] wrote a faithful follower of Rupert, at one period of the war. The men were raw recruits; the officers were full of complaints and discontents, all showing a remarkable willingness to do anything rather than that {69} which they were required to do. "The officers of your troop will obey in no kind of thing, and, by their example, never a soldier in that company," lamented Daniel O'Neil, from Abingdon. "I had rather be your groom in Oxford than with a company that shall assume such a liberty as yours does here!"[36] From Reading, protested Sir Arthur Aston, "I wish when your Highness gave your consent to leave me here behind you, that you had rather adjudged me to lose my head."[37] And from Wales came the striking declaration, "If your Highness shall be pleased to command me to the Turk, or the Jew, or the Gentile, I will go on my bare feet to serve you; but from the Welsh good Lord deliver me!"[38] From all sides came complaints of mutinies, of "unbecoming language," "affronts," injuries and violence. "In spite of my three several orders to come away, Captain Mynn remains at Newent," declared Colonel Vavasour. The garrison of Donnington not only defied the order to be quiet, "it being very late at night," but forcibly released one of their number, under arrest, and outraged the town by "robbing, and doing all villainy."[39]