Reading, Berkshire from the "Readingas", an Anglo-Saxon tribe whose name means "Reada's People" in Old English, or less probably the Celtic "Rhydd-Inge", meaning "Ford over the River". In late 870, an army of Danes invaded the kingdom of Wessex and set up camp at Reading. On 4 January 871, in the first Battle of Reading, 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 that account provides the earliest known written record of the existence of Reading. The Danes remained in Reading until late in 871, when
Battle of the Catalaunian Plains 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000, but no real estimates of Hunnic military capacity can be determined. Their barbarian allies, however, do receive mentions at other times in other sources: in 430 A.D. The Hunnish king Octar was defeated by a force of 3000 Neckar Burgundians who would later come under Hun subjugation, and Heather estimates that both the Gepids and the Amali Goths could have each fielded a maximum of 15,000 men at the Battle of Nedao in 454. Therefore, the total Hunnic forces could have plausibly been in excess of 48,000 men. This is somewhat supported by the Chronicon