" Montaigne’s half-century was so disastrous for France that it took another half-century to recover from it—and in some ways recovery never came, for the turmoil of the late 1500s stopped France from building a major New World empire like those of England and Spain, and kept it inward-looking. "

― Sarah Bakewell , How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer