Alaric II was a Visigoth king of Hispania from 484 to 507; he belonged to the royal gothic and sacred dynasty of the Balthians.
Son and successor of King Euric in 484, he improved the administrative organization of the Visigoth kingdom and in 506, he promulgated a code of laws for his Gallo-Roman subjects, known as the Breviary of Alaric.
Despite its efforts at reconciliation with the natives and especially the Catholic Church, there remains between the Arian Visigoths and the Nicene Gallo-Romans a religious difference which explains the very rapid collapse of Visigothic power in Gaul.
Clumsily, Alaric persecutes the Niceans, for fear of an episcopate that could rally to Clovis. He allies himself in the same way with the great king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, his father-in-law, who tries a skilful diplomatic maneuver, nevertheless doomed to failure because of the distances and the determination of Clovis, who understands the advantage of an alliance with the Church in championing the fight against Arian heretics.
Attacked by the Franks in the name of Orthodoxy, Alaric was defeated and killed in single combat by the Frankish king at the Battle of Vouillé in 507.
His defeat can be explained by the fact that the Visigoth king did not have all his elite troops, nor the Visigoth heavy cavalry, which had been sent to Spain. Indeed, Alaric began the Visigoth settlement in northern Spain in the 490s. To make up for the lack of men, he enlisted many Gallo-Romans favorable to the Visigoths, but unseasoned and combative.