Editing Alaric II (section)

==Battle of Vouillé and aftermath==
[[File:Reino de los visigodos-en.svg|thumb|left|The Kingdom of the [[Visigoths]] under Alaric II]]

After a few years, however, Clovis violated the peace treaty negotiated in 502. Despite the diplomatic intervention of [[Theodoric the Great|Theodoric]], king of the [[Ostrogoths]] and father-in-law of Alaric, Clovis led his followers into Visigothic territory. Alaric was forced by his magnates to meet Clovis in the [[Battle of Vouillé]] (summer 507) near Poitiers; there the Goths were defeated and Alaric slain, according to Gregory of Tours, by Clovis himself.<ref>Wolfram, ''History of the Goths'', pp. 292f</ref>

The most serious consequence of this battle was not the loss of their possessions in [[Gaul]] to the Franks; with Ostrogothic help, much of the Gallic territory was recovered, Wolfram notes, perhaps as far as [[Toulouse]].<ref>Wolfram, ''History of the Goths'', p. 245</ref> Nor was it the loss of the royal treasury at Toulouse, which Gregory of Tours writes Clovis took into his possession.<ref name=Gregory-27/> As [[Peter Heather]] notes, the Visigothic kingdom was thrown into disarray "by the death of its king in battle".<ref>Peter Heather, ''The Goths'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 215</ref> Alaric's heirs were his eldest son, the illegitimate [[Gesalec]], and his younger son, the legitimate [[Amalaric]], who was still a child. Gesalec proved incompetent, and in 511 King Theodoric assumed the throne of the kingdom ostensibly on behalf of Amalaric—Heather uses the word "hijacked" to describe his action. Although Amalaric eventually became king in his own right, the political continuity of the Visigothic kingdom was broken; "Amalaric's succession was the result of new power structures, not old ones," as Heather describes it. With Amalaric's death in 531, the Visigothic kingdom entered an extended period of unrest which lasted until [[Leovigild]] assumed the throne in 569.<ref>Heather, ''The Goths'', p. 277</ref>