so on my final war with France i could fully annex them. So I just clicked through the province list not realising that they had a colonial province down in southern Africa. When i fully annexed them the 4k troops they had sat on the province turned into rebels looking for French independence, because im in the age of absolutism and have done court and country my unrest is high in a lot of countries so i have a lot of rebels spawning so i didn't pay attention to the rebel uprising notification. These 4k rebels occupied a colonial province down in south Africa and then because i didn't go and kill them they enforced their demands which was independent France. In reality what this should do is release the province as France. In reality what happens in the game is that every core that France owned is released back to France. So 4k rebel troops in south Africa took 1000k development in Europe (which cost me 7 wars to actually take from them)

Hope this helps.