During the terrible retreat on Dunbar it is hardly too much to say his consummate technical skill saved the army from destruction. More dead than alive the remnants of Cromwell's splendid force had reached Haddington. Sick, shattered, and harassed to death with incessant marching through the rain and mire, they seemed now an easy prey. About midnight an attack on the rear-guard had been repulsed, but the position was none the less desperate. Leslie was at their heels bent on destroying them before they could reach their ships. He was out-marching them to the right on a line parallel to their own, and it was certain that with the first glimpse of daylight he would be upon them. Yet it seemed impossible to do anything. A Scotch mist was driving across them and the darkness was absolutely impenetrable. As they stood in the ranks the soldiers could hardly see their right and left hand files. Yet Monk undertook to draw the army up in line of battle fronting to its true right. It was Lambert's duty as major-general; and it must have been a rough blow to his vanity that his rival was not only allowed to undertake a task for which his own experience was inadequate, but that he succeeded in what seemed an impossibility. For succeed he did. By feeling or instinct he set about the work, of which we can now have little conception. Complicated mathematical calculations were involved; foot had to be mingled with horse, and pikemen with musketeers. But all this was child's play to Monk. The dismal morning broke, and there Leslie saw facing him a line of battle, perfect in every distance and resting on Gladsmuir and Haddington, with a swollen tributary of the Tyne to protect its front. Without hesitation the Scotch general declined the action, and hurried on to secure Cockburnspath and cut off Cromwell from Berwick.