Ladies of the Catteler against the Twickeler Schipvaart or Twickelervaart
The Twickeler Schipvaart, eleven kilometers long, so easily conceived, proved to be far more difficult to realise than Count Carel van Wassenaer would have thought. It took a work force of four hundred men nearly four years to complete. Practically speaking, the workers had to build two locks and twenty bridges, as well as dig out eleven kilometers worth of marshy soil. This slowed down the completion of the canal considerably.
However, the Count’s main problems were not of a practical nature. They centred on old feuds and historical troubles with the Councils of the Marks, the administrative areas into which the Country of Twente was divided in those days. Each Mark placed its own obstacles in the way of the Canal, most of which had to do with land ownership and farmers’ resistance against the digging of a canal through their pastures.
Especially the Ladies of the Catteler, the prosperous and unmarried owners of a great number of farms in Enter, were fanatically opposed to the plan. They felt the Canal would divide the land of the tenant farmers in an unacceptable manner. The farmers of Enter, united under the leadership of the Ladies, mounted a counter-attack. Whatever cubic metres of earth had been dug out by Count Carel’s work force by day, was immediately filled in by the angry Enter farmers at night. But after much diplomatic to and fro, the Count and the Ladies reached an agreement and the Canal was finally finished, nearly four years after the work had begun in 1772.
The Canal was a success. |