Certain events in 1848 widened the gulf between them. At the news of the outbreak of the revolution in Paris, hundreds of the restless spirits hurried there to take a hand in the situation. And after the proclamation of the Republic they began to consider various projects of carrying the revolution into their own countries. Plans were being discussed for organizing legions to invade foreign countries, and a number of the German communists entered heartily into the plan of Herwegh, the erratic German poet--"the iron lark"--who led a band of revolutionists into Baden. "We arose vehemently against these attempts to play at revolution," says Engels, speaking for himself and Marx. "In the state of fermentation which then existed in Germany, to carry into our country an invasion which was destined to import the revolution by force, was to injure the revolution in Germany, to consolidate the governments, and ... to deliver the legions over defenseless to the German troops."[3] Wilhelm Liebknecht, then twenty-two years of age, who was in favor of Herwegh's project, wrote afterward of Marx's opposition. Marx "understood that the plan of organizing 'foreign legions' for the purpose of carrying the revolution into other countries emanated from the French bourgeois-republicans, and that the 'movement' had been artificially inspired with the twofold intention of getting rid of troublesome elements and of carrying off the foreign laborers whose competition made itself doubly felt during this grave business crisis."[4]