In vain the French, with impetuous charges, strove to break through the mass of steel. The spear-heads were cleft off with sword and battle-ax, and again and again men and horses recoiled from the unbroken line. Each time the French retired the English ranks were formed anew, and as attack followed attack a pile of dead rose around them. The Count D'Alençon and the Duke of Lorraine were among the first who fell. The young Count of Blois, finding that he could not ride through the wall of steel, dismounted with his knights and fought his way on foot toward the banner of the Prince of Wales. For a time the struggle was desperate, and the young prince, with his household knights, was for a time well-nigh beaten back. Walter, fighting close beside the prince, parried more than one blow intended for him, and the prince himself slew the Count of Blois, whose followers all fell around him. The Count of Flanders was also slain, and confusion began to reign among the assailants, whose leaders had now all fallen. Philip himself strove to advance with his division into the fight, but the struggle between the Genoese and the men-at-arms was still continuing, and the very multitude of his troops in the narrow and difficult field which the English had chosen for the battle embarrassed his movements. Charles of Luxembourg, King of the Romans, and afterward Emperor of Germany, son of the old King of Bohemia, with a large body of German and French cavalry, now assailed the English archers, and in spite of their flights of arrows came to close quarters, and cutting their way through them joined in the assault upon the men-at-arms of the Black Prince. Nearly forty thousand men were now pressing round the little body, and the Earls of Northampton and Arundel moved forward with their divisions to his support, while the Earl of Warwick, who was with the prince, dispatched Sir Thomas of Norwich to the king, who still remained with his powerful reserve, to ask for aid. "Sir Thomas," demanded the king, "is my son killed, overthrown, or wounded beyond help?" "Not so, sire," replied the knight, "but he is in a rude fight, and much needs your aid." "Go back, Sir Thomas, to those who sent you, and tell them from me that whatsoever happens they require no aid from me so long as my son is in life. Tell them also that I command them to let the boy win his spurs, for, God willing, the day shall be his, and the honor shall rest with him and those into whose charge I have given him."