been accidentally sounded before the troops could reach the gate, which put O'Byrne on his guard, and the gate was defended while those inside fled to safety. It was a mark of how close the government was coming in its efforts to tame the Wicklow highlands, and a reward of £150 was posted for O'Byrne's capture (or £100 for his head). O'Byrne and his second wife, Rose O'Toole, were proclaimed traitors. Days later the Dublin suburb of Crumlin was burned by his son-in-law, Walter Reagh, and the flames of the raid were seen in the centre of Dublin, whereupon Russell ordered the city gates opened as he sent cavalry in pursuit, but to no avail. In response, a fort was built at Ballinacor with 100 O'Byrne labourers, and the pressure on the clan territory was increased. Walter Reagh Fitzgerald was captured and hanged alive in chains for 24 hours before being impaled on a spike. Russell set up spring camp at Shillelagh, hunting and fishing and receiving the heads of rebels, but O'Byrne was elusive and he intrigued with Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. The O'Byrnes executed an attack at Athy, but Fiach denounced the raid. At about this time his wife, Rose O'Toole, was captured and, upon her conviction for treason by a Dublin jury, sentenced to death by burning; her life was spared, only because she had been convinced to convey information to Fiach that his son Turlough was betraying him. O'Byrne delivered over Turlough, who was executed. Ulster alliance In his negotiations with Russell, during a truce in the Nine Years War, Hugh O'Neill included terms for the treatment of O'Byrne, and reinforced his point with the capture of the Blackwater fort, which was said to have been in response to the lord deputy's campaign in Wicklow. O'Byrne sought pardon for himself and his family – excluding his most wayward sons – in the summer of 1596, by which time he was old and sick. He presented himself on his knees to the council sitting at Dublin to seek mercy and was granted his pardon upon petition to the queen. Even so, he was in alliance with O'Neill, acting as a Leinster base for rebel influence and maintaining a force on the borders of the Pale. The fort at Ballinacor was retaken by O'Byrne, and the attacks on government forces in Wicklow began again. He had also