enhance their bargaining power with the English. O'Neill by now was also communicating with Philip II of Spain in a quest for military aid. Declaring open rebellion against the English the following year, O'Donnell's forces captured Connacht from Sligo to Leitrim by 1595, and O'Donnell personally re-instated the Chiefdom of Clan MacWilliam in County Mayo, proclaiming his ally Tibbot MacWalter Kittagh Bourke as chief. In this year, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, abandoned negotiation with the English and in 1596 the combined forces of O'Donnell and O'Neill defeated an English army under Sir Henry Bagenal at the Battle of Clontibret. Their greatest victory came two years later however at Battle of the Yellow Ford on the Blackwater River near the southern border of Tír Eoghain in August 1598. At this battle, the Irish annihilated an English force marching to break the siege of Blackwater Fort, five miles northwest of the English government's garrison town Armagh. Later that year, O'Donnell purchased Ballymote Castle from the Chief of Clan MacDonagh and subsequently made it his primary residence. O'Neill then went south to secure the allegiance of Irish clans in Munster, without much success. O'Donnell raided Connacht, destroying the town of Athenry, laying waste to much of County Galway, and on being refused entry to Galway City, burned its suburbs: "... he sent forth swift-moving marauding parties through the district of Caladh, and the upper part of the territory; and they carried off many herds of cows and other preys to O'Donnell, to the town of Athenry; and though the warders of the town attempted to defend it, the effort was of no avail to them, for O'Donnell's people applied fires and flames to the strongly-closed gates of the town, and carried to them great ladders, and, placing them against the walls, they recte, some of them ascended to the parapets of the wall. They then leaped from the parapets, and gained the streets of the town, and opened the gates for those who were outside. They all then proceeded to demolish the storehouses and the strong habitations; and they carried away all the goods and valuables that were in them. They remained that night in the town. It was not easy to enumerate or reckon the quantities of copper, iron, clothes, and habiliments, which they carried away from the town on the following day. From the same town he sent forth marauding