The siege of Boulogne took place during the autumn of 1492. Henry VII of England had led an expeditionary force of 12,000 troops across the Channel to Calais and began to besiege the French port of Boulogne on 18 October. After several weeks the siege was broken off when Henry and the French monarch Charles VIII agreed to the Peace of Étaples. The siege had proved to be a successful show of force and Henry was offered very favourable terms by Charles, including the end of French support to the pretender to the English throne Perkin Warbeck, [1] Warbeck was also expelled from the country. The terms of the treaty also included the English accepting French control of Brittany, and the French paying Henry an indemnity of 742,000 crowns, payable at 50,000 crowns per annum, equivalent to 5% of the crown's annual income. [2] Henry had been in negotiations even before the campaign, and the move against Boulogne may have been intended to put further pressure on Charles.
The siege itself was largely unremarkable, save the fact that the knight Sir John Savage who had helped put Henry on the throne (commanding the left flank of his army at the Battle of Bosworth Field) was killed during its course. Savage was sent to conduct reconnoitring (reconnaissance of the defences in preparation for the military offensive). Savage left his tent and rode around the walls of the city with another knight and Bosworth veteran Sir John Riseley, in order to assess the strength of the walls and other fortifications. [3] The two knights were intercepted by the enemy and captured. Despite being heavily outnumbered Sir John Savage refused to surrender to them and fought to his death. [4] His actions created enough of a diversion to allow Sir John Riseley to escape and flee [5] on 'a most speedy horse'. [6]
English troops withdrew to Calais and Henry returned to England. Fifty years later further English attempts against Boulogne were led by Henry's son Henry VIII. Henry VIII's forces took the city in September 1544 and then defended the city against French attempts to reclaim it later that year.
Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
The House of Tudor was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the Scottish House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, descended through his mother from the House of Beaufort, a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.
Perkin Warbeck was a pretender to the English throne claiming to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was the second son of Edward IV and one of the so-called "Princes in the Tower". Richard, were he alive, would have been the rightful claimant to the throne, assuming that his elder brother Edward V was dead and that he was legitimate—a point that had been previously contested by his uncle, King Richard III.
Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, 6th Earl of Suffolk, KG, Duke of Suffolk, was an English nobleman and soldier. The son of John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk and his wife Elizabeth of York, he was through his mother the nephew of the Yorkist kings of England Edward IV and Richard III and the cousin of Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York and of Henry VII's queen Elizabeth of York.
Sir Edward Poynings KG was an English soldier, administrator and diplomat, and Lord Deputy of Ireland under King Henry VII of England.
Étaples or Étaples-sur-Mer is a commune in the department of Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France, northern France. It is a fishing and leisure port on the Canche river.
Henry Percy, 4th Earl of NorthumberlandKG was an English aristocrat during the Wars of the Roses. After losing his title when his father was killed fighting the Yorkists, he later regained his position. He led the rearguard of Richard III's army at the Battle of Bosworth, but failed to commit his troops. He was briefly imprisoned by Henry VII, but later restored to his position. A few years later he was murdered by citizens of York during a revolt against Henry VII's taxation.
The Peace of Étaples was signed on 3 November 1492 in Étaples between Charles VIII of France and Henry VII of England. Charles agreed to end his support for the Yorkist Pretender Perkin Warbeck, in return for being recognised as ruler of the Duchy of Brittany.
The First Siege of Boulogne took place from 19 July to 14 September 1544 and the Second Siege of Boulogne took place in October 1544.
Thomas Savage was a prelate, diplomat and scholar during the Tudor period. Savage served as Chaplain to King Henry VII and was Archbishop of York from 1501 until his death in 1507. Prior to his consecration as a Bishop, Savage served as a diplomat and rector. As a diplomat Savage held the positions of English Ambassador to Castile and Portugal, during which time he helped broker the marriage treaty between Arthur, Prince of Wales and Catherine of Aragon in 1489, and later held the position of English Ambassador to France from 1490, where he took part in the conference at Boulogne.
The Intercursus Magnus was a major and long-lasting commercial treaty signed in February 1496 by King Henry VII of England and Duke Philip IV of Burgundy. Other signatories included the commercial powers of Venice, Florence, the Netherlands, and the Hanseatic League.
Roger Machado was an English diplomat and officer of arms of Portuguese extraction. He lived among the Portuguese merchants at Bruges in 1455.
Events from the 1490s in England.
The Pale of Calais was a territory in northern France ruled by the monarchs of England from 1347 to 1558. The area, which centred on Calais, was taken following the Battle of Crécy in 1346 and the subsequent Siege of Calais, and was confirmed at the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, in the reign of Edward III of England. It became an important economic centre for England in Europe's textile trade centered in Flanders.
Giles Daubeney, 1st Baron Daubeney, KG PC was an English soldier, diplomat, courtier and politician.
Sir Rhys ap Thomas (1449–1525) was a Welsh soldier and landholder who rose to prominence during the Wars of the Roses, and was instrumental in the victory of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth. He remained a faithful supporter of Henry and was rewarded with lands and offices in South Wales. Some sources claim that he personally delivered the death blow to King Richard III at Bosworth with his poleaxe.
The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and in following centuries as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne from 1455 to 1487. The wars were fought between supporters of the House of Lancaster and House of York, two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. The conflict resulted in the end of Lancaster's male line in 1471, leaving the Tudor family to inherit their claim to the throne through the female line. Conflict was largely brought to an end upon the union of the two houses through marriage, creating the Tudor dynasty that would subsequently rule England.
Sir John Savage, KG, KB, PC (1444–1492), was an English knight of the Savage family, who was a noted military commander of the late 15th-century. Savage most notably fought at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where he commanded the left flank of the Tudor (Lancastrian) army to victory and is said to have personally slain the Duke of Norfolk in single combat. Earlier in the Wars of the Roses, Savage had been a supporter and friend of the Yorkist King Edward IV, fighting alongside him and helping him to victories at the Battle of Barnet in April 1471 and the Battle of Tewkesbury the following month. He returned to active military service in 1482 when he joined the invasion of Scotland led by the King's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, where the Duke made him a Knight banneret.
Events from the year 1492 in France
Savage is an Anglo-Norman surname which was used by several English and Anglo-Irish knightly or gentry families, several of whom were politically important in England or Ireland.