The Franks applauded their King; and the army set out on the march in the direction of Poitiers, where Alaric happened at that time to be.  “As a portion of the troops was crossing the territory of Tours,” says Gregory, who was shortly afterward its bishop, “Clovis forbade, out of respect for St. Martin, anything to be taken, save grass and water.  One of the army, however, having found some hay belonging to a poor man, said, ‘This is grass; we do not break the King’s commands by taking it’; and, in spite of the poor man’s resistance, he robbed him of his hay.  Clovis, informed of the fact, 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 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.