Sloten

Sloten, or Sleat in Frisian, is a fortified town in the lake country of Friesland. It grew in the thirteenth century beside a fortified house of the Van Harinxma family. Its town rights are recorded in a charter of 1426. A waterway from Sneek to the former Zuiderzee crossed a road toward Stavoren here, making Sloten a useful place to collect tolls and control traffic. During the struggle for Friesland, the town fell in 1523 after a siege in which Frisian and Gelderland troops defended it. Its strategic position remained valuable in the Eighty Years' War, when an attempted surprise attack using men concealed in a beer ship failed.