highest number of casualties in a day and the elaborate defences built by the Germans over two years had collapsed from Foucaucourt south of the Somme, to the area just south of the Albert–Bapaume road north of the river, throwing the defence into a crisis and leaving the s "buoyant". A German counter-attack north of the Somme was ordered but took until on 2 July to begin. 2–13 July It took until 4 July for the British to relieve the divisions shattered by the attack of 1 July and resume operations south of the Albert–Bapaume road. The number of German defenders in the area was underestimated but British Intelligence reports of a state of chaos in the German 2nd Army and piecemeal reinforcement of threatened areas, were accurate. The British changed tactics after 1 July and used the French method of smaller, shallower and artillery-laden attacks. Operations were conducted to advance south of the Albert–Bapaume road, towards the German second position, in time for a second general attack on 10 July, which due to the effect of the German defence and British–French supply difficulties in the Maricourt Salient, was postponed to 14 July. German counter-attacks were as costly as British-French attacks and the loss of the most elaborately fortified German positions, like those at La Boisselle, prompted determined German efforts to recapture them. A combined British–French attack was planned for 7 July, postponed until 8 July after a German counter-attack at Bois Favière captured part of the wood. The inherent difficulties of coalition warfare were made worse by the German defensive effort and several downpours of rain, which turned the ground to mud and filled shell-holes with water, making movement difficult, even in areas not under fire. In the afternoon of 1 July, Falkenhayn arrived at the 2nd Army headquarters and found that part of the second line, south of the Somme, had been abandoned for a new shorter line. Falkenhayn sacked the Chief of Staff Major-General Paul Grünert and appointed Colonel Fritz von Loßberg, who extracted a promise from Falkenhayn to stop operations at Verdun and arrived on the Somme front at on 2 July. Loßberg studied the battlefield from a hill north of Péronne then toured units, reiterating the ruling that no ground be abandoned regardless of the tactical situation. Loßberg and Below agreed that the defence should be conducted by a thin forward line, supported by immediate