History of Reading, Berkshire earlier folk, or tribal, name. Anglo-Saxon names ending in "-ingas" originally referred not to a place but to a people, in this case specifically the descendants or followers of a man named "Reada", literally "The Red One." In late 870 an army of Danes invaded the then kingdom of Wessex and set up camp at Reading. On 4 January 871, the first Battle of Reading took place, when an army led by King Ethelred and his brother Alfred the Great attempted unsuccessfully to breach the Danes' defences. The battle is described in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", and this account provides the
Battle of the Siritsa River Battle of the Siritsa River The Battle of the Siritsa River (also Seritsa) took place on 27 August 1501 between the forces of the Livonian Order under Grand Master Wolter von Plettenberg on the one side and the forces of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and Pskov Republic on the other. The Russian forces were soundly defeated. Grand Prince Ivan III of Russia pursued expansionist policies, which strained Moscow's relations with Livonia. In 1492, Moscow built Ivangorod Fortress opposite of Narva and two years later closed down the Hanseatic office in Novgorod. Hanseatic merchants, most of them Livonians, were imprisoned.