In 1158, Holy Roman Emporer Frederick Barbarossa granted a coat of arms to Bohemia which is in use to this day-a white rampant lion with a double tail displayed on a field of red. The pan-Slav colors of red, white, and blue were adopted in Slovakia in 1848. The colors of this emblem became associated with agitation for Czech autonomoy in the late nineteenth century when Bohemians and Moravians created a white-over red bicolor. In 1918 this became the flag of the new Czechoslovak Republic.
Slovaks, however, had hoisted a horizontal tricolor in the revolution of 1848, whose white-blue-red color were recognized as symbolizing pan-Slavic nationalism. In 1920 the color blue was introduced into the Czechoslavak flag to stand for Slavakia-an especially appropriate symbol since the new arms featured in blue the traditional mountains Tatra, Matra, and Fatra.