The only safety lay in flight but at the moment of defeat and impending disaster it was not easy to extricate the troops from their dangerous position, and McClellan showed high skill in masking his line of retreat. Lee did not, therefore, immediately discover the direction in which he was moving and this delay probably prevented him from annihilating the remnants of the Union army. Once on the trail, however, he lost no time and, loosing "his dogs of war," they fell upon the retreating columns again and again in the series of terrible conflicts known as the "Seven Days' Battles." But the Union army was struggling for its life and, like a stag at bay, it fought off its pursuers with desperate courage, until finally at Malvern Hill (July 1, 1862), it rolled them back with such slaughter that a bolder leader might have been encouraged to advance again toward Richmond. As it was, however, McClellan was well content to remove his shattered legions to a point of safety at Harrison's Landing, leaving Lee in undisturbed possession of the field dyed with the blood of well-nigh 30,000 men. Chapter XVI. -- A Game of Strategy While the remnants of McClellan's fine army were recuperating from the rough handling they had received, Lee was developing a plan to remove them still further from the vicinity of Richmond. Harrison's Landing was too close to the Confederate capital for comfort and the breastworks which the Union commander erected there were too formidable to be attacked. But, though he could not hope to drive his adversary away by force, Lee believed that he could lure him from his stronghold by carrying the war into another part of Virginia. The opportunity to do this was particularly favorable, for the Union forces in front of Washington, consisting of about 45,000 men, had been placed under the command of General John Pope. Pope had served with Grant in the Mississippi campaign and had begun his career in the East by boasting of the great things he was about to accomplish, referring contemptuously to his opponents and otherwise advertising himself as a braggart and a babbler. He had come, so he told his soldiers in a flamboyant address, from an army which had seen only the backs of its enemies. He had come to lead them to victories. He wanted to hear no more of "lines of retreat" or backward movements of any kind. His headquarters were "in the saddle" and his mission was to terrorize the foe. These absurd proclamations pretty thoroughly exposed Pope's character, but he had been at West Point with General Longstreet, one of Lee's ablest advisers, and that officer speedily acquainted his chief with the full measure of his opponent's weaknesses. This was exceedingly useful to Lee and when he discovered that McClellan and Pope were pulling at different directions like balky circus horses, while Halleck with one foot on each was in imminent peril of a fall, he determined to take advantage of the situation and hasten the disaster.