r his
death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the
greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side
of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own
account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning
churches and laying waste villages.

[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