Beautiful Burgundian Bureaucracy and the Citizens of Ghent

Philip the Good ruled over a sprawling collection of territories  (Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Hainaut and more) that shared little beyond a common ruler. To hold them together, he built an ambitious centralising bureaucracy, appointing loyal outsiders as stadhouders to govern provinces on his behalf and restructuring the Chambers of Accounts. His most significant innovation was the Great Council, which became the highest court of appeal across all his lands, displacing local autonomy in favour of ducal authority. This bred real resentment among cities and nobles accustomed to governing themselves.