During the latter's administration, who had oversaw a military occupation in eastern Hispaniola, he maintained neutral support for the regime, which came to an end in 1844, the year of Borgella's death.

Due to the ancestry of his mother, a free woman of color, Borgella could not legally use the name of his father, who was white; but he obtained that right on the proclamation of equality on April 4, 1792.

That same year, he joined the mulatto insurgents and fought against the Negroes and the whites; but the black troops under Toussaint Louverture prevailed, and Borgella suffered persecution.

Borgella, like his fellow mixed raced contemporaries, Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer, served in the French army for some time, but returned to the revolutionary party and distinguished himself by his bravery and his generosity toward the vanquished, a trait in which he displayed during the final skirmishes of the Haitian Revolution.

After Haiti became independent in 1804, He took an active and important part in the civil wars during the early period of the republic, of which he was appointed president by the assembly as successor of Andre Rigaud, who died on September 18, 1811. then submitted to Alexandre Pétion on March 20, 1812.