The list which is given here has been made as comprehensive as possible, partly because no adequate bibliography is given in any of the modern studies of Henri IV, either French or English. However, it is far from exhaustive.
All the following works have been consulted, but principally the ‘Recueil des Lettres Missives de Henri IV’, the memoirs and the ‘Histoire Universelle’ of Agrippa d’Aubigné, Sully’s ‘Oeconomies Royales’ and the near contemporary biography by Péréfixe (mainly derived from the histories by Matthieu, de Thou and Legrain who actually knew the King). D’Aubigné has too often been dismissed as a bigot, but he tried to be fair and was, it must be remembered, the first historian as opposed to a mere writer of memoirs to have known his sovereign intimately since Commynes under Louis XI. In any case I have, I hope, allowed sufficiently for personal prejudice, whether d’Aubigné’s Protestant bias, Sully’s self-glorification or the sycophancy of Péréfixe as court historian to Louis XIV. Quotations from Charlotte Lennox’s translation of the eighteenth-century adaptation of Sully’s memoirs have been checked against the 1638–63 edition of the ‘Oeconomies Royales’; they rarely conflict with the sense of the original and their prose is generally preferable to that of any modern rendering. Similarly, John Dauncey’s elegant translation of Péréfixes’ ‘Histoire du Roy le Grand’ has only been used after comparing it with the first French edition of 1660 and the revised edition of 1664.
In addition I have leant heavily on the neglected English sources of the period, notably Unton’s dispatches, the travelogues of Coryate, Fynes Moryson and Dallington, and above all Sir George Carew’s secret report on ‘the State of France’ of 1609.
Among secondary works Poirson’s ‘Histoire du Règne de Henri IV’ is helpful as a rough guide to the period 1594–1610 even if old-fashioned and sometimes inaccurate and if its author was much too uncritical of Sully. Of modern studies Pierre de Vaissière’s ‘Henri IV’, written forty years ago, remains the best biography while, though he has little time for d’Aubigné, Raymond Ritter’s ‘Henry IV lui-même; l’Homme’ which employs an ingenious psychological approach shows remarkable insight into the King’s character.