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. An earlier Siege of Boulogne had taken place in 1492 when the English Tudor King Henry VII laid siege to the lightly defended lower town of Boulogne in the Pas-de-Calais, France
"On the sixth of October Henry the Seventh landed at Calais; on the nineteenth he sate down before Boulogne, with sixteen hundred men at arms, and twenty-five thousand infantry. Charles could not much fear the tardy operations of his foe; but the name of English invasion, so associated with defeat and disaster, was portentous to the French: besides, Charles was eager to prepare for his Italian wars. Thus disposed, peace was easily brought about. One only obstacle presented itself. Henry insisted that the newly-arrived Duke of York should be delivered up to him; Charles rejected the proposition with disdain: the negociations were suspended, and the French King grew uneasy; it was no pleasant thing to have thirty or forty thousand of those English in the kingdom, who had disputed it inch by inch, at the expense of so much misery and slaughter, with his grandfather. Their King was averse to war; but the body of the army, the nobles and leaders, ardently desired it: some intrigue, some accident, might light up a train to be quenched only by seas of blood; and all this for a Prince, in whom, except that he was gallant and unfortunate, Charles took no concern" (chapter 16).
