When Radbod, King of the Frisians, was driven out of Western Frisia in 689 by Pepin of Heristal, Duke and Prince of the Franks (father of Charles Martel and great grandfather of Charlemagne, who completed the conquest of Frisia), the defeated king was considered a convert to Christianity, and the preparations for his baptism were made on a grand scale.

Never a whole-hearted convert, Radbod, even as one foot was in the water, had a visitation of doubt.

Where, he made bold to ask, were the noble kings his ancestors, who had not, like himself, been offered this inestimable privilege of baptism--in heaven or in hell?
The officiating Bishop replied that they were doubtless in hell.

"Then," said Radbod, withdrawing his foot, "I think it would be better did I join them there, rather than go alone to Paradise." Enkhuisen, where one embarks for Friesland, is a Dead City of the Zuyder Zee, with more signs of dissolution than most of them.

Once she had a population of sixty thousand; that number must now be divided by ten.
"Above all things," says M.Havard, the discoverer of Dead Cities, "avoid a promenade in this deserted town with an inhabitant familiar with its history, otherwise you will constantly hear the refrain; 'Here was formerly the richest quarter of commerce; there, where the houses are falling into total ruin, was the quarter of our aristocracy,' But more painful still, when we have arrived at what appears the very end of the town, the very last house, we see at a distance a gate of the city.