[Footnote 240: Pierre d'Alheim, _Le jargon Jobelin_, Paris, 1892, in 18mo: glossary, under the word _Hirenalle_, p. 61, and the verbal communication of M. Marcel Schwob. _Cronique Martiniane_, ed. P. Champion, p. 8, note 3; _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 270; De Montlezun, _Histoire de Gascogne_, 1847, in 8vo, p. 143; A. Castaing, _La patrie du valet de coeur_, in _Revue de Gascogne_, 1869, vol. x, pp. 29-33.] While he was occupying Sermaize, the church of which was fortified, Jean, Count of Salm, who was governing the Duchy of Bar for the Duke of Lorraine, laid siege to it with two hundred horse. Collot Turlaut, who two years before had married Mengette, daughter of Jean de Vouthon and Jeanne's cousin-german,[241] was killed there by a bomb fired from a Lorraine mortar. [Footnote 241: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. lxxiii, 87, note 1. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches_, pp. 4-15.] Jacques d'Arc was then the elder (_doyen_) of the community. Many duties fell to the lot of the village elder, especially in troubled times. It was for him to summon the mayor and the aldermen to the council meetings, to cry the decrees, to command the watch day and night, to guard the prisoners. It was for him also to collect taxes, rents, and feudal dues, an ungrateful office in a ruined country.[242] [Footnote 242: Bonvalot, _Le tiers etat d'apres la charte de Beaumont et ses filiales_, Paris, 1886, p. 412.] Under pretence of safeguarding and protecting them, Robert de Saarbruck, Damoiseau of Commercy, who for the moment was Armagnac, was plundering and ransoming the villages belonging to Bar, on the left bank of the Meuse.[243] On the 7th of October, 1423, Jacques d'Arc, as elder, signed below the mayor and sheriff the act by which the Squire extorted from these poor people the annual payment of two _gros_ from each complete household and one from each widow's household, a tax which amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty golden crowns, which the elder was charged to collect before the winter feast of Saint-Martin.[244] [Footnote 243: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, pp. lxxi _et seq._] [Footnote 244: _Ibid._, proofs and illustrations, li, p. 97.] The following year was bad for the Dauphin Charles, for the French and Scottish horsemen of his party met with the worst possible treatment at Verneuil. This year the Damoiseau of Commercy turned Burgundian and was none the better or the worse for it.[245] Captain La Hire was still fighting in Bar, but now it was against the young son of Madame Yolande, the Dauphin Charles's brother-in-law, Rene d'Anjou, who had lately come of age and was now invested with the Duchy of Bar. At the point of the lance Captain La Hire was demanding certain sums of money that the Cardinal Duke of Bar owed him.[246] [Footnote 245: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 16, 17.] [Footnote 246: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, appendix, lxii.]