Euric (440-28 December 484) was King of the Visigoths from 466 to 484, succeeding Theodoric II and preceding Alaric II.
Biography[]
Euric was the son of Theodoric I and the brother of Theodoric II, and he murdered his brother in 466 in order to take the crown of the Visigoths for himself. With his capital at Toulouse, he gradually expanded his holdings in Gaul, including sieges at Clermont in 475 and 476, and he also advanced into Hispania. He defeated several other Visigothic kings and chieftains in a series of civil wars before becoming the first ruler of a truly unified Visigothic nation, and he drove the Suebi into the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula; by the time that the Western Roman Empire had fallen in 476, nearly the entire peninsula was his. He also extended his kingdom as far north as the Somme River in France. He died in 485, and his kingdom included all of the Iberian Peninsula - except for Galicia - and a third of France. His son Alaric II lost the Visigoths' French possessions after his defeat and death at the Battle of Vouille.