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The sudden death of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1477 has provoked a severe crisis of the political order as imposed by the subsequent dukes since the end of the 14th century, in the burgundian Low Countries. The most outspoken opponents to this centralised power were to be found among the urban elites, which obtained from Mary of Burgundy, in 1477 the set of the so-called “Great privileges,” the first in a series of constitutional texts for the whole of the Low Countries. Apart from these normative texts, judicial practice was another way for the urban elites to mark their reconquest of lost power. The fate of former collaborators of Charles the Bold, the chancellor Hugonet, confident Humbercourt and receiver general Pieter Lanchals, executed in Ghent and Bruges, are proof to this construction of pre-republican urban politics, in which the spectacle of justice and of judicial practice played a decisive role.