Danuta Shanzer

The battle of Vouillé saw the Frankish king Clovis defeat the Visigoths under Alaric II, and as a consequence most of what's now southwestern France, incl the Visigothic capital at Toulouse, passed into Frankish control. Whether this constitutes the beginning of France is obviously definitional, but it's not an unreasonable take.

This then is a collection of papers related to the battle. As is not uncommon with this sort of collections on ancient or medieval battles, only one is actually about the battle itself. Another is on the wider war, the rest of questions like whether the war was religious in motivation (probably not, but succeeding generations liked to think so), Byzantine diplomatic involvement, and the Visigoths in Gaul being more-or-less unidentifiable archaeologically.

I found some papers more interesting than others, but overall it's a good read. It's legally available as a free download here.… (mehr)