Ireland might rest secure, because the king had turned aside into schemes for the augmentation of his continental dominions. Long and fruitless bickerings and negotiations with Lewis VII., the shifty King of France, ended in 1159 in the _War of Toulouse_. Henry laid claim to the great south-French county of Toulouse, as owing fealty to his wife's duchy of Aquitaine. He led against it the greatest army that had been seen for many years, in which the King of Scotland and the Prince of Wales served as his chief vassals. But when Lewis of France threw himself into Toulouse, Henry turned aside, moved, it is said, by the curious feudal scruple that it did not befit him as Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou to make a personal attack on his suzerain, the King of France. He ravaged the county, but did not proceed with the siege of Toulouse itself. Next year he patched up a peace with his feudal superior, which was to be confirmed by the marriage of his five-year-old son and heir, Prince Henry, with Margaret, the French king's daughter (1160). The chief interest of the very fruitless war of Toulouse was that Henry employed in it a new scheme of taxation, which was an indirect blow at the feudal system. As Toulouse was so very far from England, he allowed those of the English knighthood who preferred to stay at home, to pay him instead of personal service a composition called _scutage_ (shield-money). The money thus received was used to hire a great body of mercenary men-at-arms, whom the king knew to be both more obedient and more efficient soldiers than the unruly feudal levies. [Sidenote: =Quarrel with the Church.--Thomas Becket.=]