The siege of Kinsale, or battle of Kinsale (), was the ultimate battle in England's conquest of Gaelic Ireland, commencing in October 1601, near the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and at the climax of the Nine Years' War—a campaign by Hugh O'Neill, Hugh Roe O'Donnell and other Irish lords against English rule. Owing to Spanish involvement, and the strategic advantages to be gained, the battle also formed part of the Anglo-Spanish War, the wider conflict of Protestant England against Catholic Spain. Background Ireland had been claimed as a lordship by the English Crown since 1175 but had never been fully subjected. By the 1350s, England's sphere of influence had shrunk to the Pale, the area around Dublin, with the rest of the country under the rule of Gaelic lords. The Tudor monarchs, beginning with Henry VIII, attempted to reassert their authority in Ireland with a policy of conquest and colonisation. In 1594, forces in Ulster under the previously loyal Earl of Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, rebelled. Hugh Roe O'Donnell and Hugh Maguire joined Tyrone's rebellion. A string of battlefield victories from 1593 to 1599, and an expansion of the war from Ulster through the midlands and into Munster, had wrested control of most of the island from the English Crown. By the end of 1599, the English controlled little beyond the walled towns and regional garrisons. Following the failure of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Philip II decided to take advantage of the Irish rebels in order to create a new front in the war against England. Spanish aid was offered to the Irish rebels in the expectation that tying the English down in Ireland might draw English resources away from their allies in the Netherlands, the Dutch Estates, which were engaged in a long rebellion against Spanish rule, and provide another base for privateers, such as the Dunkirkers, to disrupt English and Dutch shipping. The 2nd Spanish Armada aimed at supporting the rebels, but it was smashed by storms off Cape Finisterre in October 1596. The ill Philip sent forth another armada the following year, but this too failed due to storms, bad luck and bad planning. Spanish landing After Philip II's death, Philip III continued to provide direct support (material support had been sent for years) to the Irish rebels fighting England. In 1601, Philip sent Don Juan del Águila and Don Diego Brochero to