The Gate Hewn Open with Axes

Of all the crafts the butchers always walked first with their banner; this distinction was granted them by Charles IV. According to the description in the Soběslav Code their banner was red, bearing on one side a white lion with a single tail and on the other a gate with a portcullis, with an armed man hewing at it with an axe from either side. That coat of arms they are said to have had from King John the Blind — for when he lay before the city, the butchers hewed the gate open for him with their axes to let him in. In 1437 King Sigismund granted them a lion with a double tail for their arms, which King George confirmed in 1464, and with it the right always to walk first with their banner, immediately behind the banner of the city itself.