The Ruthless Water Woolf

This 'Impolderment Plan' of Haarlemmermeer ('Lake Haarlem') from 1641 by Jacob Bartelsz Vernis was not realised. The officials were hesitant to replace the lake and wetlands with this geometrical grid of dikes and polders. The costs were enormous, the fishermen resisted the plan for obvious reasons, and the merchants of Amsterdam, Leyden and Haarlem also opposed the plan; they feared that empolderment would be a serious hindrance for the crucial water transport between their cities.
The map is embellished with a poem from Joost vanden Vondel, describing how the (Dutch) Land Lion fights and conquers the (mythological) ruthless Water Woolf.
Several other plans were made to empolder Haarlemmermeer. In the end the job was done more than two centuries later, between 1849-1852.