The soldiers demanded an immediate fulfilment of the terms of the letter, and the tribunes at once set to work to draw up the discharges in authorized form; the payment of the legacies was to be deferred till the winter. This, however, did not satisfy the soldiers of the fifth and twenty-first legions, who insisted on immediate payment, which was met by the private resources of Germanicus and his friends. The first and twentieth then asserted their own claims, and were marched back to their quarters near Cologne, under Cæcina, carrying the treasure chests of their commander-in-chief between the standards. Germanicus then went to the upper army and renewed the military oath of the second, thirteenth, and seventeenth legions without any opposition; the fourteenth legion showed signs of wavering, and was at once offered the discharges and the money. The beginnings of a mutiny among the “flagmen” who were settled on the Lippe were summarily repressed by the prefect of the camp, who illegally but wisely executed two of the ringleaders. Germanicus returned from the Upper Army to Cologne, where the recently mutinous legions were quartered, and there received the deputation who had arrived from Rome with the answer to his report. The soldiers, without waiting to hear the message of the deputation, assumed that it was unfavourable, and again broke out into mutiny; they attacked and insulted Plancus, who had come from Rome at the head of the deputation, and he was with difficulty rescued by Germanicus, and sent away under an escort of Gallic cavalry. The advisers of Germanicus, possibly members of the deputation, then accused him of too great leniency and of imprudence. It would have been much better for him to have secured his personal safety and that of his wife and child by remaining with the Upper Army, which was faithful; and they urged him to send Agrippina and the boy to the Gauls at Trêves.