Seven Years' War

[Incongruous]

The overseas war were a bit more than the "French and Indian" War. India was also up for grabs. If France could control the far east trade it's power would be cemented for a while after.
Struggle for Empire? What are you speaking of, Europe? If so domination was still his goal, his latter wars were to make France's position invulnerable, but not to conquer all of western Europe.
France had not been for "centuries" the premier military power, for perhaps a century or less. The Seven Years war really showed what dire straights the French Army was in.

[The Wizard]

Major, perhaps, but not the most major. Rather, the smallest of the major players in the major theaters, I'd say.

The overseas war were a bit more than the "French and Indian" War. India was also up for grabs. If France could control the far east trade it's power would be cemented for a while after.

I never claimed that these were non-entities for the French. But they were sideshows.

Struggle for Empire? What are you speaking of, Europe? If so domination was still his goal, his latter wars were to make France's position invulnerable, but not to conquer all of western Europe.

Louis XIV's expressed goal was to expand France to her "natural frontiers": the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Trying to do that alone brought him into conflict with all of Europe on multiple occasions. This was no longer a mere feudal struggle between kings: it had become the fight of all of Europe against the prospect of France overthrowing the balance and becoming Europe's master, and not just its most potent state.

France had not been for "centuries" the premier military power, for perhaps a century or less. The Seven Years war really showed what dire straights the French Army was in.

Actually -- no. France had been the most powerful single kingdom militarily (remember that people like Charles V held multiple titles and thus ruled multiple kingdoms with entirely different sysems of government) on the Continent ever since its victory in the Hundred Years' War and its involvement in the wars in Italy at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries. Time and time again, it took all France's neighbors to contain her, and that became increasingly difficult as time advanced.

When Napoleon took France to conquer huge tracts of Europe, he was realizing the dream of generations of Capet and Bourbon kings and the nightmare of generations of all the other royals throughout Europe. That's why his destruction of the Republic at his hands didn't stop the wars, and why he kept on having to fight coalition after coalition -- he was the biggest threat to the Continental status quo ever. And keeping it all same old, same old had been the premier foreign policy guideline since the advent of the Renaissance.