Anglican Netherlands can easily be the richest nation in EU4, since you get free mercantilism, free money and one of the best end trade nodes in the game in the English Channel. People often mistake "playing tall" for not conquering anything, but in truth it is conquering responsibly, IE: conquering the local trade nodes, taking subjects, and not taking massive amounts of overextension.
If you want to release a country, you should check whether it's in the same culture group, not the same culture, to be precise. If it had been French, Norman, Occitan etc. instead of Gascon, it would have worked. But Basque, according to the game, is within the Iberian culture group, therefore you couldn't release Gascony.
You can also do rush to kill a little bit aragon ans puppet, form france make aragon core all iberia and form netherlands, i did it and it is utterly broken with good army cuz of french idea and smei colonist, but i was sooo low on adm point cuz of estating de estating etc
Choose go with the empower and immediately fight improper after incident starts, France will declare on you, then you will fight an additional defense war against France meanwhile with emporer as well
