The famed city-state of Florence may be taken as the best type of the democratic community, controlled by a political leader. The city, as famous for its free institutions as for its art, in the first half of the fifteenth century had come under the tutelage of a family of traders and bankers, the wealthy Medici, who preserved the republican forms, and for a while, under Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), surnamed the Magnificent, made Florence the center of Italian culture and civilization. [Sidenote: Florence, a Type of the Cultured and Democratic Italian City-State] Soon after the death of Lorenzo, a democratic reaction took place under an enthusiastic and puritanical monk, Savonarola, who welcomed the advent of the French king, Charles VIII, in 1494, and aided materially in the expulsion of the Medici. Savonarola soon fell a victim to the plots of his Florentine enemies and to the vengeance of the pope, whom Charles VIII had offended, and was put to death in 1498, The democracy managed to survive until 1512 when the Medici returned. The city-state of Florence subsequently became the grand-duchy of Tuscany. [Sidenote: The Obscure Duchy of Savoy in 1500] Before we take leave of the Italian states of the year 1500, mention should be made of the insignificant duchy of Savoy, tucked away in the fastnesses of the northwestern Alps, whose duke, after varying fortunes, was to become, in the nineteenth century, king of a united Italy. [Sidenote: The City-States in the Netherlands] The city-state was the dominant form of political organization not only in Italy but also in the Netherlands. The Netherlands, or the Low Countries, were seventeen provinces occupying the flat lowlands along the North Sea,--the Holland, Belgium, and northern France of our own day. Most of the inhabitants, Flemings and Dutch, spoke a language akin to German, but in the south the Walloons used a French dialect. At first the provinces had been mere feudal states at the mercy of various warring noblemen, but gradually in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, important towns had arisen so wealthy and populous that they were able to wrest charters from the lords. Thus arose a number of municipalities--practically self- governing republics--semi-independent vassals of feudal nobles; and in many cases the early oligarchic systems of municipal government speedily gave way to more democratic institutions. Remarkable in industry and prosperity were Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, Liege, Utrecht, Delft, Rotterdam, and many another. [Sidenote: Relation of the City-Stats of the Netherlands to the Dukes of Burgundy]