The absorption of Spain was a last and desperate attempt.

It had failed.

France had not won the leadership of European civilization.
In the coming reign, new forces, new conditions, were to widen the field of national ambitions.

And it was the nation across the channel which would grasp these forces and distance her rivals in an advance along the untried paths of commerce and a world-wide expansion.
With a strange apathy France had seen herself mistress of a large part of the American Continent, won for her by adventurous Frenchmen and Catholic missionaries.

She did practically nothing to develop this magnificent colonial empire.