Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez (1796–1865), more commonly called Philippe Buchez, was a French historian, sociologist, and politician. He was the founder of the newspaper L'Atelier, and he served briefly, in 1848, as the president of the Constituent National Assembly, which was then meeting at the Palais Bourbon in Paris. Buchez was born at Matagne-la-Petite, which is part of the town of Doische in the province of Namur, in Belgium. At the time of his birth (31 March 1796), however, the village was part of the French département of the Ardennes. He died on 11 August 1865 in the south of France, at Rodez, in the department of Aveyron. La Charbonnerie He finished his general education in Paris, and then applied himself to the study of natural science and medicine. In 1821, he co-operated with Amand Bazard, Jacques-Thomas Flotard, and others to found a secret association, La Charbonnerie, modeled on the Italian Carbonari, with the object of launching an armed insurrection against the French government. The organization spread rapidly and widely, and made several abortive attempts to foment revolution. In one of these attempts, the affair at Belfort, Buchez was gravely compromised. However, the jury that heard his case did not find sufficient evidence to warrant condemnation. Failed insurrectionary attempts of Charbonnerie in Belfort (January and July), Thouars and Saumur (February), culminated in the September execution in Paris of the Four Sergeants of La Rochelle affair (Quatre Sergents de La Rochelle). In 1825, he graduated in medicine, and soon published Études de théologie, de philosophie et d'histoire ("Studies in Theology, Philosophy, and History"). About the same time, he became a member of the Saint-Simonian Society, presided over by Bazard, Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin, and Olinde Rodrigues. (The society was based on the ideas of Saint-Simon, an early socialist theoretician.) Buchez also contributed to its organ, the Producteur, but he left this group because of the strange religious ideas of its "Supreme Father," Enfantin. Buchez began to elaborate on his own original ideas, which he characterized as Christian socialism. For the exposition and advocacy of his principles he founded a periodical called L'Européen. In 1833, he published an Introduction à la science de l'histoire ou science du développement de l'humanité, which was received with considerable favor (2nd ed., improved and enlarged, 2 vols., 1842). Notwithstanding its prolixity, this is an interesting work. The part that describes the aim, foundation, and methods of the science of