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BUCHON, JEAN ALEXANDRE (1791-1849), French scholar, was born on the 21st of May 1791 at Menetou-Salon (Cher), and died on the 29th of August 1849. An ardent Liberal, he took an active part in party struggles under the Restoration, while
throwing himself with equal vigour into the great work of historical regeneration which was going on at that period. During 1822 and the succeeding years he travelled about Europe on the search for materials for his Collection des chroniques nationales francaises ecrites en langue vulgaire du XIIIe au XVI' siecle (47 vols., 1824–1829). After the revolution of 183o he founded the Pantheon litteraire, in which he published a Choix d'ouvrages mystiques (1843), a Choix de monuments primitifs de l'eglise chretienne (1837), a Choix des historiens grecs (1837), a collection of Chroniques etrangeres relatives aux expeditions francaises pendant le XIIIe siecle (184o), and, most important of all, a Choix de chroniques et memoires sur l'histoire de France (1836–1841). His travels in southern Italy and in the East had put him upon the track of the medieval French settlements in those regions, and to this subject he devoted several important works: Recherches et materiaux pour servir d une histoire de la domination francaise clans les provinces demembrees de l'empire grec (184o); Nouvelles recherches historiques sur la principaute francaise de More' et ses hautes baronnies (2 vols., 1843–1844); Histoire des conqueetes et de l'etablissement des Francais daps les 'tats de l'ancienne Grece sous es Villehardouin (1846, unfinished). None of the numerous publications which we owe to Buchon can be described as thoroughly scholarly; but they have been of great service to history, and those concerning the East have in especial the value of original research.