The German Ocean rolled in upon the inland Lake of Flevo.

The stormy Zuyder Zee began its existence by engulfing thousands of Frisian villages, with all their population, and by spreading a chasm between kindred peoples.

The political, as well as the geographical, continuity of the land was obliterated by this tremendous deluge.

The Hollanders were cut off from their relatives in the east by as dangerous a sea as that which divided them from their Anglo-Saxon brethren in Britain.

The deputies to the general assemblies at Aurich could no longer undertake a journey grown so perilous.