At multiple points in History I've seen it conveyed that an underlying key element is the rivalry between France and Germany. Their goals conflict in desiring hegemony over Europe. First with the Church, then with the Hapsburgs, later with democracy and it's opposition.They are situated next to eachother, and can not directly win against one another, so they can only look the other way for adjacent land-resources. For Germany this expanse is to the east, and indeed you see Germans at multiple points slowly expand their rule eastward, either directly by expanding pre-existing German borders, or through infiltration by way of the German monarchies who often invited Germans to settle areas where farming was absent.But for France who's equivalent is naturally the west; i.e Spain, they never seem to openly pursue it, at least superficially, in the same manner. Even in the napoleonic wars, it wasn't dealt with directly till later (although given his ambitions, perhaps he desired surprise in order to ensre victory over his stronger advesaries). You would think muslim rule over spain would've given france a caesus belli a millenia ago to absorb it, and if not there, then hapsburg spain encircling them. But in neither case did they pair their military responses with grander ambitions for the region. I'd also think the greater similarity in language would seem to ease influence to the region.So why? what am I missing? France ideologically isn't exactly a passive element in history and in most premodern periods they were strogner.
>>18645601https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacte_de_Famille
>>18645601do you know how difficult that would be? the Romans took almost 200 years to subdue Spain.
They tried and got fucked.
>>18645601Im french and I never thought about spain more than 20 seconds in my life it probably is why, we just don't care
>>18645601Spanish war of succession?
>>18645601They had the English to contend withIf they attack the crusader states occupying moorish lands the English would attack
>>18645827The Numantia siege was legendary and tragic
>>18645601By the time they were able to project that kind of military power abroad it was already too late. It took a while for the French kings to centralize and build up their power base, and following the Hundred Years War their most immediate policy was to prevent being encircled again. This meant that Burgundy had to be neutralized, which they mostly successfully did by extensively fighting in it and absorbing rich parts of it (Flanders) after the Habsburgs inherited Burgundy. They also managed to prevent a marriage between the Habsburg and the heiress to Brittany and replaced it with a French-Briton marriage. The Habsburgs did eventually end up securing their dynasty in Spain, which gave them much needed resources to continue their rivalry with France but by the time France had the resources to even think about taking Spain it was already in the Habsburg fold and they would've left their eastern border wide open if they were to try to get a huge army through the mountain range separating France and Spain, the latter also being a larger, richer and more powerful kingdom than they were used to fighting. When they tried later it triggered the War of Spanish Succession.
>>18645601They've been trying since Roncevaux and got raped every time.
unless you want an endless supply of braindead cannon fodder iberia's not really worth much in the grand scheme of things
>>18645930Castillans electing the grandson of Louis XIV as their king isn't a conquest. You're projecting what happened to England in 1066 or even 1684 when the situation weren't comparable. The Spaniards chose the Bourbons as their kings and the war happened because the Austrians thought it should be theirs instead. The Spanish war of succession was closer to be a war where French and Spaniards fought off an Anglo-Austrian invasion than a French invasion.
>>18646268Iberia had less than half the population of France for most of the past 500 years so that's the other way around I'm afraid.
>>18646276>The Spaniards chose the Bourbons as their kingshumiliation ritual
>>18646279>iberia isn't a shithole because...it had half of france's populationfavelamonkey moment
>>18645839When did they try their hardest?
Frogs fear the Spanish Bull
it was not worth it
>>18645601>Why didn't France ever conquer Iberia?Same tier of questions:>Why didn't Germany conquer the entire Europe?>Why didn't Japan conquer the entire Asia?>Why won't the US conquer the entire China? Spain is not a small island around the ocean, anon...
>>18645827The Romans also had no compunction about waging total war and killing everyone who resisted them.
>>18646276>Louis XIVSon of a Spanish infanta
>>18647126>matrilineal ancestry
>>18645601Even ignoring the Napoleonic Wars, they literally did try at the height of their power under Louis XIV. Putting a Bourbon on the spanish throne would have made the kingdom more sympathetic at worst and an eventual junior partner at best, but due to Philip V giving up claims to the french crown latter scenario became an impossibility.
>>18647260The first war Philip V fought was against France retardo kun
>>18647609That war was retarded. It got France, Germany and England to form a coalition, lmao.
In the middle ages, who would've won an extended naval confrontation/war?
>>18645601Different weather, different people, different traits… what works at one side of the Pyrenees doesn’t work at the other
>>18648093
>>18648258Southern French are culturally and genetically closer to most Iberians than they are to Parisians and anything north of it
>>18648093There was an actual naval war between the crown of aragon and france with both sides having italian allies and the aragonese completely wiped the floor with the french fleet
>>18648258Africa begins at the Pyrenees
>>18648270See this >>18648264And France as a whole except for the periphery with germanic admixture is genetically closer to Spain genetically than Germany.If Spain is Africa that makes the French mulattoes at best.
>>18648277no raping moroccans today, franco
>>18648264Indeed, but Southern France cannot be defended from Northern France.
Population differences probably contributed, given european societies were generally comprable in strength. In early periods, the mediterranean was always far more populous than above it and (going by paris' numbers) as they were catching up, the black plague hit. It wasn't until the early modern period where they surpassed them, giving them a 500 year window from then till now where this wouldn't have been an issue, although they were too busy with the 100 years war for the first part of it.But I guess the post wasn't getting at why they failed but why they seemed to hardly try, which I don't know
Because they chose the path of the grey squirrel instead.
