" Alaric had prepared for the struggle; and the
two armies met in the plain of Vouille, on the banks of the little river
Clain, a few leagues from Poitiers. The battle was very severe. "The
Goths," says Gregory of Tours, "fought with missiles; the Franks sword
in hand. Clovis met and with his own hand slew Alaric in the fray; at
the moment of striking his blow two Goths fell suddenly upon Clovis, and
attacked him with their pikes on either side, but he escaped death,
thanks to his cuirass and the agility of his horse."

Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder; and Clovis,
pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, where he
settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the war season
returned he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he
likewise occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of
the treasure of the Visigothic kings. He quitted it to lay siege to
Carcassonne, which had been made by the Romans into the stronghold of
Septimania.

There his course of conquest was destined to end. After the battle of
Vouille he had sent his eldest son, Theodoric, in command of a division,
with orders to cross Central Gaul from west to east, to go and join the
Burgundians of Gondebaud, who had promised his assistance, and in
conjunction with them to attack the Visigoths on the banks of the Rhone
and in Narbonensis. The young Frank boldly executed his father's orders,
but the intervention of Theodoric the Great, king of Italy, prevented
the success of the operation. He sent an army into Gaul to the aid of
his son-in-law Alaric; and the united Franks and Burgundians failed in
their attacks upon the Visigoths of the eastern provinces. Clovis had no
idea of compromising by his obstinacy the conquests already
accomplished; he therefore raised the siege of Carcassonne, returned
first to Toulouse, and then to Bordeaux, took Angouleme, the only town
of importance he did not possess in Aquitania; and feeling reasonably
sure that the Visigoths, who, even with the aid that had come from
Italy, had great difficulty in defending what remained to them of
Southern Gaul, would not come and dispute with him what he had already
conquered, he halted at Tours, and stayed there some time, to enjoy on
the very spot the fruits of his victory and to establish his power in
his new possessions.

It appears that even the Britons of Armorica tendered to him at that
time, through the