At the same time Robert, Sire de Baudricourt, was fighting with Jean de Vergy, lord of Saint-Dizier, Seneschal of Burgundy.[247] It was a fine war. On both sides the combatants laid hands on bread, wine, money, silver-plate, clothes, cattle big and little, and what could not be carried off was burnt. Men, women, and children were put to ransom. In most of the villages of Bassigny agriculture was suspended, nearly all the mills were destroyed.[248] [Footnote 247: Du Chesne, _Genealogie de la maison de Vergy_, Paris, 1625, folio. _Nouvelle biographie generale_, vol. xlv, p. 1125.] [Footnote 248: S. Luce, Domremy and Vaucouleurs, from 1412 to 1425, in _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, ch. iii.] Ten, twenty, thirty bands of Burgundians were ravaging the castellany of Vaucouleurs, laying it waste with fire and sword. The peasants hid their horses by day, and by night got up to take them to graze. At Domremy life was one perpetual alarm.[249] All day and all night there was a watchman stationed on the square tower of the monastery. Every villager, and, if the prevailing custom were observed, even the priest, took his turn as watchman, peering for the glint of lances through the dust and sunlight down the white ribbon of the road, searching the horrid depths of the wood, and by night trembling to see the villages on the horizon bursting into flame. At the approach of men-at-arms the watchman would ring a noisy peal of those bells, which in turn celebrated births, mourned for the dead, summoned the people to prayer, dispelled storms of thunder and lightning, and warned of danger. Half clothed the awakened villagers would rush to stable, to cattle-shed, and pell-mell drive their flocks and herds to the castle between the two arms of the River Meuse.[250] [Footnote 249: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 66.] [Footnote 250: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 66. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. lxxxvi, and appendix, xiv, p. 20.]