Bleh bleh bleh. Spain piggybacked on Portugal's pioneering navigation and then held onto a sucky backwater that failed to develop economically while giant Spanish ships shipping back inflation into Europe couldnt' defend themselves against an uneducated Englishman on a tiny little boat (see Francis Drake). Spain's grand armada was then destroyed by a tiny little heretical island-nation led by an illegitimate heretical young woman in a single day. No European nation is more of a failure than Spain. Not to mention that it was ruled by North Africans for 800 years, the only major European nation to be ruled by Africans.
The Spainish blew it economically, but we're talking about military strength. Spain's naval collapse is important, but it was basically replaced by England, not France. France's navy did eventually become a force, but briefly.
Your point on Spain being ruled by Africans brings up an important point. What little positives there are in France's military history can be summed up in three words: location, location, location. Spain was vulernable to the Moors, Eastern Europe was vulernable to the Turks/Tartars/Mongols/Magyars/etc., and Britain and North-Central Europe were vulnerable to the Vikings. Thus, the Carolingian Empire was surrounded by buffer states and France survived this period relatively untouched. In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Spain continued to buffer France against Islam, eastern threats did not extend west into Germany, let alone France, and the Viking threat was gone. Germany and Italy had other concerns (mostly internal) and posed no threat to France. This left France with only England to worry about, and England mostly had it's way with France during this time.
