 This already applied at the top : the constitution contained an age @-@ requirement for the members of the Uitvoerend Bewind , which favored the election of staid Patriot regents , and discriminated against the more talented " young Turks " that were appointed Agents , like Jacobus <unk> , Gerrit Jan Pijman and Isaac Jan Alexander Gogel . The tenor of the Bewind became more conservative in the ensuing years . The agents went to work energetically , however , and started with an onslaught on the old administrative organization of the country , in a deliberate attempt to liquidate the very identity of the old federal structure . The once mighty province of Holland was carved into three pieces : Amstel ( Amsterdam and immediate vicinity ) , Texel ( the northern peninsula ) and Delf ( the southern part ) ; and the other provinces were often merged in larger entities , like Overijssel and <unk> into Ouden <unk> , and Frisia and Groningen into the <unk> department . The aim was to organize the country into units with equal numbers of primary assemblies ( hence the small Amstel department with its large population ) . The first elections for the administrative organs of these new entities were held in March 1799 . But , of course , such a reorganization did not suddenly change the old allegiances of the people living in these areas . In any case , the new local and departmental administrations , though elected , were supposed to execute the policies as centrally laid down by the national government . As the elections often put people in power who represented the old order ( like Joan Arend de Vos van Steenwijk in Ouden <unk> ) this was exceedingly unlikely . To put it differently , the political effort to attain " national unity " through reconciliation of the diverse Patriot factions of all stripes , got in the way of the effort to create an efficient national unitary state , as envisioned by Gogel . 
