slew the soldier on the spot with one sweep of his sword, saying, ’What will become of our hopes of victory if we offend St. Martin?’” 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 Septimauia.

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 Narbonness.  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 cone 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 staid 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 interposition of Melanins, bishop of Rennes, if not their actual submission, at any rate their subordination and homage.