The Battle of Clontibret was fought in County Monaghan in May 1595, during the Nine Years' War in Ireland. A column of 1,750 English troops led by Henry Bagenal was ambushed near Clontibret by a larger Gaelic Irish army led by Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. The English column had been sent to relieve the besieged English garrison at Monaghan Castle. The English suffered very heavy losses, but a suicidal cavalry charge apparently saved it from destruction. The Irish victory shocked the English and was their first severe setback during the war. Background The Nine Years' War began as Irish lords in Ulster responded to the encroachment of English authority on the Irish nobility's traditional rights and privileges. The breaking of the MacMahon lordship in Monaghan by the English Lord Deputy William Fitzwilliam, his willingness to allow English lords to enrich themselves at the expense of Irish lords, and the military incursions into Hugh Maguire's lordship in Fermanagh all served to convince the Irish that their patrimonies were under threat. Hugh O'Neill of Tyrone engaged in a proxy war from April 1593 to the beginning of 1595 using Hugh Maguire and Hugh Roe O'Donnell to fight the English while he reinforced his position in Ulster. However, Tyrone broke out into open warfare against the English in February 1595 when he attacked and captured the Blackwater Fort on the border of Counties Tyrone and Armagh. O'Neill promptly besieged the English garrison at Monaghan Castle, and Sir Henry Bagenal, commander of the English forces, marched out to its relief on 25 May (4 June New Style) from Dundalk via Newry. His army was made up of 1,750 troops, including some veterans and certain companies newly arrived from the Spanish campaign in Brittany, but there were many new recruits in the ranks. Bagenal's men were mostly infantry, armed with muskets and pikes; there was also a small number of horsemen raised in the Pale. The English in Dublin did not take the threat from Tyrone's men seriously, although some thought the ammunition and gunpowder supplied to the English was insufficient. When one of the Brittany captains questioned this he was told by Lord Deputy that he had nothing to worry about as this was Ireland and not the Low Countries; the large number of troops was to "give countenance to the service". The battle The Battle of Clontibret was essentially a two-day running