LOST IMPERIAL POWERS LAST 250 YEARS

Italian city states, long dead mackerels.

United Provinces, long dead as a mackerel.

Spain, by 1830, dead as a mackerel. Britain delivered the coup de grace. Portugal had long preceeded it.

Post Napoleonic France, still struggling, moertally wounded by the rise of Germany, 1870, but also a smothered mackerel everywhere by Britain and Russia during the 19th Century.
Austria, finally snuffed out during WWI.

Germany a smothered and crushed mackerel by 1945, its imperial ambitions long smothered in its crib by Britain and Russia.

Britain, finally, on its last gasp, was delivered the coup de grace in the teeth of a pyrrhic victory, by its own rogue progeny by 1945, mackerel dead and gong tormented sea.