>>10298907God I'll be powerful then
I can understand that feeling
there's this mechanic in the game where if you lose your home province your whole nation and empire falls apart. So the AI usually stacks the capital with multiple armies of units around it. But it seems like France didn't because Paris got captured by Württemberg, which is some low-rank german country you can't even play as. So all their territories just became rebel holdouts.
I stole all their Caribbean possessions when I realized what was happening, And also Cuba and Hispaniola while fighting the Spanish.
The game counteracts this tho by having the populous be ridiculously rebellious if a foreign army occupies the capital, so France was reborn after a few turns but with just Paris
