Andre Rigaud (1761-18 September 1811) was a mulatto leader of the Haitian Revolution who was opposed to Toussaint L'ouverture and the mentor of Alexandre Petion and Jean-Pierre Boyer.
Biography[]
Andre Rigaud was born in 1761 in Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue to a wealthy French planter and a slave wife, and he was trained as a goldsmith in Bordeaux, France as a freedman. He became active in mulatto rights upon returning to Saint-Domingue, and he championed the rights of free people of color alongside Vincent Oge and Julien Raimond. Rigaud led Haitian forces in southern and western Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution in the 1790s and early 1800s, and he opposed both the French colonists and Toussaint L'ouverture's slave rebels. He returned alongside Charles Leclerc's army of 82,000 troops in 1802, crushing L'ouverture and his slave army, and he died in 1811 while attempting to seize power from Alexandre Petion in South Haiti.