Ive been reading some Wiki on the french naval history and the Spanish armada and they do seem to be a super powers by the 16th century but why were they never as strong in military power and naval power as much as England. Ive read the english by the time the spanish armada set out to invade England they had a massive amount of ships and army but were outclassed by their smaller galleys which were more maneuverable.
Of course their navy must be strong in order to be independent and read that some of their politicians said the navy is their life line, paraphrasing a lot but how did an island nation outclass both those competing nations which seem like had much more resources on their larger sized nations and not simply a colony of either one to become the largest conquering nation ever.
That's not even remotely true. France was so powerful, England had to repeatedly form coalitions with many other European countries to keep France in check. Spain was so powerful that when the House of Bourbon was going to inherit the Spanish throne, everyone was so terrified of what a French-Spanish superpower would look like that most of the rest of Europe went to war with Louis XIV to stop it from happening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Succession
The House of Bourbon did, in fact, inherit (the King of Spain is a Bourbon even today), but he was forced to swear that France and Spain would never unify.
England had a good navy, but France was able to match them from time to time, most notably outside Yorktown, which allowed America to capture the British Army in the Revolutionary War.