'The Burghers of Calais' is a bronze statue by Auguste Rodin.

It commemorates an event in 1346, during The Hundred Years War, when Edward III of England laid siege to the city, following his victory at Crécy. It was the single biggest operation of the War, with 32,000 English troops surrounding the city. After 11 months of this, Edward offered to spare the starving city if six of its burghers would surrender themselves to him for execution. His instructions were they should walk out through the city gates wearing nooses round their necks and carrying the keys to both the city and its castle.

Eustache de Saint Pierre, one of the wealthiest burghers of the city, was first to volunteer. Five others, Jaques de Wissant, Pierre de Wissant, Jean de Fiennes, Andrieu d'Andres and Jean d'Aire then joined him.

They were spared owing to the intervention of Edward's wife, Phillipa of Hainault, who convinced Edward that such a barbarous act would be a bad omen for the child she was carrying. In the event the child died anyway, probably within a year of being born, one of the victims of the Black Death that killed more than one-third of the population of Europe.

The statue was hugely controversial when it was first erected. The public expected allegory, gloriously heroic figures, a statue on a plinth. What they got instead was a statue at ground level with figures displaying "pain, anguish and fatalism", what Rodin himself regarded as the greater heroism of self-sacrifice. Today, it is regarded as one of the greatest works of the 19th Century (which is saying something).