AHC!:French America

By the time Henry IV came to the throne, it was far too late for a French monarch to make the kingdom Protestant. It became much harder for monarchs to change the people's denomination once people identified as Catholic as opposed to Protestant, or Lutheran as opposed to Calvinist. Bourbons staying Protestant would only mean more religious toleration, civil war, or both.
French kings during the relevant time period also had ambitions in Italy, which would be much more difficult to pursue if they were Protestant. It is entirely plausible, however, that those claims to Naples and Milan might not have been inherited by the French King.
 
Why does everyone want to turn France into a protestant nation? Surely being able to colonise America can be done by non protestant countries. The trick is to make France focus on the Americas and not Europe. The same would be true for a protestant France.
 
Why does everyone want to turn France into a protestant nation? Surely being able to colonise America can be done by non protestant countries. The trick is to make France focus on the Americas and not Europe. The same would be true for a protestant France.
Can France afford to not focus on Europe? France needed to have a large army to protect her borders.
 
Can France afford to not focus on Europe? France needed to have a large army to protect her borders.
I disagree with that. France bordered devided Italy and Germany, neutral Switserland and the Netherlands who wasn't interested in any part of European France either. The only danger at France's border was Spain, but Spain was fighting wars everywhere completely overstretching itself, until Spain almost completely collapsed and stopped being a danger to France. The main reason France got into wars with the rest of Europe was France's own expansionism, which caused the neighbouring countries to unite to stop France. If France would have been happy with what it had, it would have been able to make deals with neighbouring countries and its border would be (relatively) safe. Sure it wouldn't be completely without enemies. If it would focus on colonization of America, it would almost certainly come into conflict with England.
 
Franc eexpansionnism was directly tied, at this era, with the need to break the hapsburg surrounding of France (Netherlzands, Franche-Comte, Milanais, Spain) that posed a direct threat on the internal policy of France (just take a look at Spain interventionism uo to the end of Religions War). Furthermore, this spanish presence really posed an issue to the development of atlantic harbours of France, at the point no great colonial project could have be done under a possibility of spanish blockade of the coast.
 
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