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 appointed "Agents", like Jacobus Spoors, 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 Drente into "Ouden Yssel", and Frisia and Groningen into the "Eems 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 Yssel) 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.