army advanced south. The English moved north from Edinburgh to meet them, but Leslie positioned his army north of Falkirk, behind the River Carron. This position was too strong for Cromwell to assault; Leslie resisted every provocation to fight another open battle and eventually withdrew. Cromwell followed and attempted to bypass Stirling, but was unable to. He then marched to Glasgow and sent raiding parties into Scottish-held territory. The Scottish army shadowed the English, moving south west to another strong position at Kilsyth on 13 July. The English moved back to the east and the Scots returned to the Carron. The English stormed and captured the outlying Scottish position of Callendar House, but Leslie still declined to be drawn out. Cromwell probably intended the action less as an attempt to provoke Leslie into battle and more to draw the Scots' attention away from activities taking place further east. Crossing the Forth English landing Late in 1650 the Council of State, the executive authority of the English Commonwealth, had ordered the construction of 50 flat-bottomed boats, which arrived in Leith in June 1651. The Scots anticipated the possibility of another attempt to cross the Forth and established a garrison at Burntisland. Early on 17 July, an English force consisting of the garrison of Leith, Daniel's Regiment of Foot and four troops of Colonel Robert Overton's Regiment of Horse, boarded the flat-bottomed boats. They totalled 1,600 men, under the overall command of Overton, and they crossed at the Firth of Forth at its narrowest point, landing at North Queensferry on the Ferry Peninsula. The Scottish troops at Burntisland moved towards the English landing place, sent for reinforcements from Stirling and Dunfermline and dug in to await them. For the next four days the English shipped the balance of their force across the Forth and Major-general John Lambert took command. Numbers By the morning of 20 July the English had assembled four infantry and three cavalry regiments on the north shore of the Forth. They were a mixture of experienced veteran units and freshly raised troops; one cavalry regiment may have consisted of militia. The historian Stuart Reid suggests the English were "very much a scratch force". They totalled approximately 4,000 men. The Scots had three infantry regiments brigaded under Major-general James Holborne and 500 Highlanders led by Hector Maclean of Duart; and three cavalry regiments commanded by John Browne of Fordell with