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.] 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.