The Irish under Tyrone and clan chief Hugh Roe O'Donnell made their way to Kinsale in a 300 mile march and were joined with 200 Spanish under Alonso de Ocampo.

[8] In resisting this advance, Tyrone managed to rally other Irish septs notably Florence MacCarthy who were dissatisfied with the English government, and some Catholics such as Owen McEgan who opposed the spread of Protestantism in Ireland.

[11] Irish expatriates, Owen McEgan and James Archer and Spanish clericals such as Franciscan Mateo de Oviedo had convinced King Philip II of Spain that he had a realistic chance of ousting the English from their first colony.

Philip thus sent the 2nd Spanish Armada aimed at supporting the Irish rebels, but this was a costly failure - the fleet was driven off course by storms off Cape Finisterre in October 1596 with many ships sunk.

[16] Spain now hoped that Ireland would be the ideal replacement, as a base for privateers, such as the Dunkirkers to disrupt English and Dutch shipping, but also as a potential to strike at England.

The following year, Spanish forces mounted a huge effort to take the Anglo-Dutch held port of Ostend on the Flanders coast, and an expedition to Ireland was organised.

Águila was a hardened veteran that had made his reputation under the Duke of Parma, had served in the Brittany campaign and had been part of successful expedition to Cornwall in 1595 under Captain Carlos de Amésquita.

A Spanish fleet attempting to enter the Channel against the Dutch failed due to high winds but the sighting and reports caused panic in London and intense mobilisation of trained and untrained men went underway.

[25] By early 1601, the war in Ireland had changed - the new English commander Charles Blount along with George Carew, the Lord President of Munster had suppressed parts of the rebellion by using a scorched Earth policy in Tyrone's lands.

Finally setting out from Lisbon, they sailed towards Ireland - the delay meant that conditions on Spanish ships were poor and many soldiers and sailors were on half rations.

In his report which he made for his own defence, he wrote, Thirty leagues off the Irish coast, I told Águila to identify his chosen port, because I was merely in charge of the fleet.

Águila and Brochero, in the San Andres, managed to battle the winds northeast towards the Cork-Kinsale region, accompanied by the bulk of the fleet and carrying some 1,700 men.

Águila granted safe conduct to the two town officials, Oviedo who had accompanied him, wrote a letter to Tyrone and O'Donnell to make haste, particularly with much needed cavalry.

Two-thirds of his troops were Spanish regulars – Venetian observers described these as 'a picked body of infantry', accompanied by some 1,000 Italian soldiers and around 200 Irish expatriates.

The latter sailed with six ships; the powerful Warspite, Garland (commanded by Vice Admiral Amyas Preston), Defiance, Swiftsure, and Merlin, Non-Pareil and six requisitioned merchantmen carrying some 2,000 troops.

Ringcurran fell soon after - Captain Paez de Clavijo with 86 Spanish prisoners agreed to surrender, leaving the besieged without any access to the sea.

Accompanying them was the quartermaster general Secretary of the Adelantado Pedro Lopez de Soto who had vital food, ammunition and supplies for Águila's men.

Glen Barrahane castle was handed over to Zuibaur who garrisoned it with over 100 men and strengthened its defences placing a number of cannon inside - the six ships meanwhile were moored in the shallows of Castlehaven.

Leveson then left his vice-admiral Preston in Garland to guard Kinsale harbour and took with him, Warspite, Defiance, Swiftsure, and Merlin, as well as a merchantman and a caravel to Castlehaven.

[59] The Irish allies had managed to march their army's south in freezing December weather, O'Donnell having avoided Carew by going through the Slieve Felim Mountains in Tipperary.

[63] On 24 December, the Irish advanced in a driving thunderstorm , the vanguard led by Tyrrell and attempted to march into battle in tercios - large squares of pikemen and musketeers.

Mountjoy then ordered some 300 horse and 1,000 men under Colonel Richard Wingfield to harass O'Neill's body of troops seizing two key fords over an intervening stream.

Fighting raged in the darkness for two hours the Spanish managed to overrun the first trench but got no further and the English led by Oliver St John who was wounded in the process, forced them back to within the walls.

[75] An English force under Captain Robert Harvey and George Flower sailed and took the surrender of Lopez de Soto's Spanish garrison at Castlehaven on 10 February.

[78] On 1 January 1602, five ships carrying two infantry companies and supplies led by Don Martin de la Cerda departed Lisbon for Ireland.

[82] By May, however Spain's finances and navy were in a poor state, and so had to rely on Federico Spinola's small galley fleet to an attempt an invasion via Flanders.

[83] The armada had been costly in terms of men, ships and finance and had failed to divert English resources away from the Netherlands - the Spanish remained tied down at Ostend.

[88] News of another victory came through just days later – the English and Dutch garrison led by Francis Vere, besieged at Ostend had just repelled a huge Spanish assault at great cost to the latter.

[102] It also meant that the Duke of Lerma was now forced to put pressure on Philip III to extricate Spain from the war - the crown's finances had become severely stretched, and therefore a cut back in foreign expenditure was necessary.

Mountjoy was well rewarded - appointed by James I as Master of the Ordnance, he was also given the more distinguished title of Lord-Lieutenant (1603–1604) and also created the of Earl of Devonshire, granting him extensive estates.