Simultaneously, Rigaud emerged as a rebel leader among the gens de couleur libres (free people of color), who were based in the south of Saint-Domingue, where they had a significant presence around the port of Les Cayes.

[2] In May 1792, Saint-Domingue's French Republican commissioners formed an alliance with Rigaud, allowing him to march his forces into the capital of Port-au-Prince and dissolve the city's restive government of white planters.

In August 1793, the new Republican commissioner, Sonthonax, proclaimed freedom for all enslaved persons in Saint-Domingue in an attempt to secure control over the colony in the face of a counter-revolutionary revolt by white planters in Le Cap and invasions by rival European powers as part of the War of the First Coalition.

After they abolished slavery, Sonthonax and his fellow commissioner Polverel successfully convinced Toussaint to join the French Republican side of the conflict.

[10] In July 1798, Toussaint and Rigaud traveled in a carriage together from Port-au-Prince to Le Cap to meet the recently arrived representative Théodore-Joseph d'Hédouville, sent by France's new Directory regime.

[11] Following this decisive strike, Alexandre Pétion, a free colored officer (and future Haitian president) defected to Rigaud's side, bringing with him a large contingent of veteran troops.

[12] Outside of the South, Rigaud instigated smaller revolts in the northern regions around Le Cap, Port-de-Paix, and Môle-Saint-Nicolas, as well as the west-central Artibonite plain.

[14] To the United States, Rigaud's ties to France represented a threat to American commerce, which had been harassed by French privateers for the last two years as part of the Quasi-War.

[16] For instance, the frigate USS General Greene, commanded by Captain Christopher Perry, providing fire support to the blacks as Toussaint laid siege to Jacmel.

In June, an emissary of France sent by the newly empowered First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte (who had recently overthrown the Directory) reaffirmed Toussaint's position as general-in-chief.

[19] The number of victims in these massacres remains disputed: the contemporary French general François Joseph Pamphile de Lacroix suggested 10,000 deaths, while C. L. R. James, a 20th-century historian from Trinidad, later claimed only a few hundred persons had been killed in contravention of the amnesty.

[20] Five months after the war, in December 1800, Toussaint ordered an invasion of the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, which occupied the eastern half of the island of Hispaniola.

Throughout the war, the Spanish authorities in Santo Domingo had generally supported Rigaud, fearing Toussaint's own designs on the eastern portion of Hispaniola.

[21] The American consul Edward Stevens claimed that Toussaint had launched the invasion in response to a rumor that France was sending 15,000 troops to Santo Domingo in support of Riguad.

However, Rigaud returned less than two years later, when he and his fellow exile Pétion joined Charles Leclerc's unsuccessful 1802 campaign to reassert French control over the colony.