 The leaders of the Patriots tried to seek a solution during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, at the cheapest possible cost.Immediately the war (which had begun badly) developed disastrously, a wave of deprivation spreading through the country, and this result of the attempted reform was widely felt as a matter of national shame, with the harrowing contrast between the famous past and the miserable present becoming clear to everyone.The first exercitiegenootschappen were set up in the beginning of 1783 in Deventer, Dordrecht or Utrecht.