By the mid-1790s, with slave uprisings in the North, Rigaud was leading an army, a force in the Ouest and Sud departments. He was given authority to govern by Étienne Polverel, one of the three French civil commissioners who had arrived in the colony. Rigaud's power came from his influence with the free black and mulatto planters, found mostly in the South. They were fearful of the masses of former slaves, led by the likes of Romaine-la-Prophétesse, with whom Rigaud refused to ally and sided instead with the French commissioners, who abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue in 1793. Rigaud's soldiers included blacks and whites.