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 mulattos 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, and he was given authority to govern by Étienne Polverel, one of the French Civil Commissioners who had abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue in 1793. The early exploits of his mulatto army included acts of extreme brutality and cruelty. The most notorious atrocity was the slaughter of a pregnant white woman and forcing the father to eat the embryo.

In the South and West, from 1793 to 1798, Rigaud played an important role in defeating a British invasion and re-establishing the plantation economy. Although Rigaud respected Toussaint Louverture, the leading general of the former slaves of the North, and his ranking superior in the French Revolutionary Army, his refusal to acknowledge Toussaint's superior authority led to the bitter "War of the Knives" (Guerre des couteaux) in June 1799, when Toussaint's army invaded Rigaud's territory. Rigaud was exiled to France in 1800.