The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.
Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate.

His conduct exposed him to the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the French War Department.

In fact, he had doubly sinned: he had actually exceeded his furlough by four months: he was technically guilty, first of desertion, and secondly of treason.

In ordinary times he would have been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris.

Thither Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap a rope wherewith to hang himself.
On his arrival at Marseilles, he hears that war has been declared by France against Austria; for the republican Ministry, which Louis XVI.
had recently been compelled to accept, believed that war against an absolute monarch would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and hasten the advent of the Republic.