André Rigaud

André Rigaud (1761-1811) was the leading mulatto military leader during the Haitian Revolution. Among his protégés were Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer, both future presidents of Haiti.

Something of a successor to Vincent Ogé and Julien Raimond as champion of the interests of free mulattoes in Saint-Domingue (as colonial Haiti was known), Rigaud aligned himself with revolutionary France and with an interpretation of the Rights of Man that ensured the civil equality of all free people, white and non-white. His army established itself during the mid-1790s as a leading force in the West and South. Unlike many other free people in Saint-Domingue, Rigaud did not oppose the French abolition of slavery in 1794. In June 1797, the "War of the Knives" (Guerres des couteaux) broke out between Rigaud and Toussaint Louverture, the leading general of the former slaves. Rigaud was exiled to France in 1800.

He returned to Saint-Domingue in 1802 with the expedition of Charles Leclerc, Napoleon's brother-in-law, who sought to unseat Toussaint and return Saint-Domingue to more direct French control. (The expedition also had the aim of restoring slavery, although this was not known to many of its participants.) Rigaud was sent back to France after the failure of the expedition, and for a time was held a prisoner in the same fortress as his rival Toussaint, the Fort-de-Joux.

Rigaud returned to Haiti yet a third time in December 1810, establishing himself as "President of the Department of the South" in opposition to both Pétion and Henri Christophe. Shortly after his death the following year, the South returned to Pétion's fold.