The capital of the strategic crossroads province of Burgundy, seventeenth-century Dijon was a classic bonne ville and ville parlementaire. The city, along with the rest of the duchy of Burgundy, had been “reattached” to the French crown following the death of the last great Valois duke, Charles the Bold (d. 1477). Modest in size next to great provincial centers such as Lyon, Orléans, and Marseille, Dijon nonetheless outweighed these and all but a handful of other provincial cities as a governmental and administrative center. The 1 1/2 square kilometers inside the city's walls housed a full array of ancien régime law courts and government institutions, including the Parlement of Burgundy, a chamber of accounts, a bureau of treasurers, various lesser royal tribunals, and later the offices of the intendant of Burgundy. Dijon was also the permanent home of the Estates of Burgundy, which met every three years until the Revolution, and their standing committee, the chambre des élus, which supervised tax collection and other provincial affairs. The city itself was governed by a large, powerful, and active commune, the Mairie de Dijon, whose extensive jurisdictions and considerable autonomy over local governance dated back as far as the twelfth century. The mairie's strength in the late sixteenth century enabled those who dominated it to challenge the authority of Burgundy's Parlement and turn the city into a principal center of the Catholic League.