His most momentous action as minister, however, was his proposal to bring armed volunteers from the provinces to Paris. These citizen-soldiers, called "fédérés", were intended to complement the grand festivities set for the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Servan also planned to give them military training before using them to supplement the army at the front. The scope and length of their stay in the capital was undefined, and the proposal was highly contentious: some, like the king, saw it as a plot to stack Paris full with anti-monarchists, while others, like Maximilien Robespierre, feared the outsiders might be used as a provincial counterweight to the radical Parisian sans-culottes.