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The Hundred Years' War is the historical setting for Rodin's Burghers of Calais. The French port city had been under siege and, facing starvation, was forced to surrender. In 1347, the English King Edward III offered to spare the people of Calais if six of its citizens, or burghers, would surrender themselves to be executed.

In 1884, the town of Calais commissioned Rodin to create a historical monument celebrating the patriotism of the Burghers. Instead, Rodin expressed the anguish and determination of six individual men who chose to walk to their deaths to save the lives of others.

An early preliminary design for the work, below left, introduced some of the emotional elements that would be developed in later versions, below right. Although originally conceived as one piece on a pedestal, Rodin later expressed the desire for his Burghers to stand separately at ground level where passers by could walk among them.

The installation in the courtyard approaching Stanford's Main Quad honors Rodin's idea for the positioning of the Burghers. Hundreds of people walk by here every day, many stopping to walk on the cobblestones, looking closely at each of these men.

History gave this story a happier ending. At the pleading of his wife, Philipa of Hanawalt, Edward III spared the lives of the Burghers.

Rodin wrote of these men,
Between their devotion to their cause and their fear of dying,
each of them is isolated in front of his conscience.

Pierre de Wissant	Eustache de St. Pierre	Jean d'Aire
Jean de Fiennes	Jacques de Wissant	Andrieu d'Andres