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With General Weygand having replaced General Gamelin as the head of the French troops, the obsession of always trying to reconstitute a continuous front has been abandoned. According to their new tactics, the French troops are organized in strong points in the towns and woods and in a depth of about 10 km. These hedgehogs include infantry, AT mines, Hotchkiss Mle1914 MGs, 25mm and 47mm AT guns but also 75mm field guns used in an AT role. They are organized for a 360° defense. The advancing German tanks are rapidly cut from their supporting infantry and confronted on the rear by the French artillery batteries (75mm Mle1897 field guns, 105mm Mle1913 field guns, 155mm C Mle1917 and 155mm GPF field guns) engaging them in direct (75mm field guns but also the 105mm field guns) and indirect fire. On June 8 and 9, the 16e DI rears are reinforced by the 24e DI. After 5 days, the German operation failed in that area and the Germans sustained heavy losses. The XIV.Panzerkorps is then moved from this area and engaged behind the XVI.Panzerkorps near Péronne, where the German assault is more successful. The German troops lost about 135 tanks in that battle (destroyed or transiently damaged), including many definitely destroyed ones especially against French artillery batteries firing directly on the enemy tanks. The 2 French divisions have nonetheless lost 60-70% of their strength and manpower but they have blocked the advance of a Panzerkorps, which was finally directed against a neighbouring part of the front. The isolated hedgehogs fought generally until the end or until the exhaustion of all ammunition. These units were not even peace time units but only reserve units. Unlike in Gembloux (May 14-15, 1940) the French troops had no strong artillery support, first because artillery batteries were engaged in direct fire missions against the German tanks, and second because once the German tanks had bypassed the strong points they were pouring like swarms on the French rears, engaging the HQs, heavy artillery batteries and supply columns. The artillery batteries could then not provide indirect fire support anymore and had to fight in self-defense against the enemy tanks. The strong points were therefore often left with there own mortars to provide support to the infantry. As usual, the German tanks almost always avoided contact with well set up defenses (or in other case French heavy tanks) and went elsewhere to break through the lines, letting the infantry, artillery and aircraft deal with the strong points cut from their rears. After this battle the number of operational tanks of the XIV.Panzerkorps dropped dramatically (at least transiently): on June 8, the 10.PzD was left with 60 tanks only and the 9.PzD with 30 tanks only. The remnants of the 16e DI and 24e DI will continue to fight after this battle like for example on the "Chauvineau Line" near Paris.