Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754–93), born in Chartres, was a political pamphleteer and leading French revolutionary. His early career was spent travelling and writing political pamphlets and books. His 'Théorie des lois criminelles' (1781) was a plea for penal reform. He even spent some time in the Bastille for writing a seditious pamphlet. Brissot visited the Netherlands, Switzerland, England, and the United States. He was interested in humanitarian schemes and founded the abolitionist Société des Amis des Noirs. When he returned to France in 1789 he launched the Patriote français, which later became the voice of the Girondins (initially known as Brissotins).

Brissot believed that war was necessary to carry the Revolution to the rest of Europe and he furiously attacked the legitimacy of the European monarchs. In the Legislative Assembly his great influence on the conduct of foreign affairs contributed to the French declaration of war on Austria in 1792, in spite of strong opposition from Robespierre and his allies. After the fall of the monarchy, a power struggle between two groups ensued culminating in the defeat of the Girondins by the Montagne supported by the parisian Sans-Culottes. Brissot was among the 29 Girondin deputies who were arrested on June 2 1793 and he was executed on October 31st of that year.