"Don't be ridiculous, here we have a nation known for being coward and surrendering in nearly every war, and the devs give them some idea called "élan" that gives them +20% morale and therefore unbeatable on the field, and then you have the glorious and mighty Spanish Empire that was 1000000000000000000000000 times stronger than France and it barely manages to survive.

Don't believe me? Look at Charles V's possessions during his reign, look at the Austrian and Spanish Habsburg alliance, look at all their american colonies, and then tell me, what did France do to to even get a spot in the shadow of Spain?"

Now this glorious piece of propoganda came from a paradox thread called Castille/Spain is Ridiculously Underpowered and is on page 6.

So let me address the first point about French military incompetence since it is the most egregious example of bad history. I can easily off the top of my head list several great French military victories, and they're even in the EU4 timeline - The Napoleanic Wars, or the Franco Dutch War, or the War of Spanish Succession. Whether Elan is too powerful to represent French military competence in that timeframe is debatable, but the French were notably better than cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Now a look at the second claim, which is not so much bad history perse since according to wikipedia, Spain at its greatest territorial extent was 7 million km larger than France, but it doesn't prove the first point since Spain's colonial empire is not really proof of Spanish military dominance, most troops fighting in the Americas were indigenous to the land, and disease really helped, and so Spain only really fought hard for their territory in Europe.

Of course, I can't really provide an in depth refutation of this bad history as I am not studying in the field, but the French as the cheese eating surrender monkey is a piece of bad history that always bothers me since it is demonstrably not true. Even I with just a general grasp of European history know its not true.