I think Olivier's point is that Prioux' use of mechanized forces - and he did have a very modern force for the Hannut to Gembloux battles - wasn't particularly impressive. He can't blame inadequate French equipment, since he had just as mechanized and horseless a force as the opposing Germans. He still fought a largely static battle, the results of which weren't nearly as impressive as they could have been.
At Gembloux Prioux didn't have much choice but to fight a static battle - first of all, he (and his forces)
were there in a defensive role, after all. Secondly - when the French arrived they found the line they had been expected to be occupying was a mess; the Belgians had stepped their defensive line forward a couple of times, and large sections of the Cointet anti-tank fence wasn't yet rebuilt, in places they'd moved it SO far forward that it made a nonsense of its purpose - being hundreds of yards in front of instead of backing-up a series of flood channels and river bottoms that were supposed to be the
first line of defence against armour.
So when the French got into their pre-arranged position - they found that position was a shambles, robbing Prioux of the defensive base line he could have operated
forward from. Instead, in many places he had to use his armour in place of the planned static defensive positions, and let the Germans come at him.
And given the usually-formative experience of contact with the enemy, you might well have found Prioux's opinions had changed somewhat by the time of the Armistice!
As Olivier wrote, Prioux was still around in the Vichy army. I've read some of the doctrinal documents issued under Vichy, they weren't nearly as progressive as one would expect as far as lessons learned went.
To which I'd have to reply - would you expect them to be??? Given that the Metropolitan French Army wasn't going to be permitted tanks by the terms of the Armistice? Instead those doctrinal documents are going to have to deal with the best use of what Vichy was left with...
No-one in WWII had the vehicles to completely motorize their forces
Depends what and where you look at
Given the timeframe of this thread - don't forget the BEF was entirely motorised/mechanised.
The French problem - and Prioux doesn't seem to have been better than the rest here - was in insisting on mixing horses and motor vehicles at the tactical level as well.
The French problem - as with SO much else of their doctrine - was that this had worked so "well" in WWI, in the Belgian Salient by the British in 1914, and in the breakthrough battles of 1918...given the caveat of ONLY when distance travel was possible at all, at the start and end of the war
What the Germans did was to have entirely motorized units, and entirely horse-drawn ones
What the Germans did was to establish doctrine on the back of the difference of movement rates - what we (erroneously or not) refer to as blitzkrieg; use the motorised/mechanised forces to pound the enemy line at the
schwerpunkt, break through, use their faster movement rate to manouver and package the enemy forces on both sides of the break into a salient that the slower-moving "conventional" forces (for that time!
) could march past, surround and reduce at their leisure.They created a "hierarchy of movement and use" in effect.
French cavalry divisions each included a mechanized and a horse brigade, so half of the division was moving at a different speed. The French should instead have created entirely motorized units and entirely horse-drawn ones instead of insisting on sharing out transport assets more or less equally.
if they'd done that -
without the doctrine change - ALL they would have done is create two sets of units ....one of which probably wouldn't have been of any practical use in a given situation. You have to have a doctrine that
makes use of the different rates of movement...and with the French defensive mindset - ALL it would have done is create a bunch of all-horse cavalry units that would have sat behind the lines waiting for a breakout that would never come - just like most of WWI.