Collar and Badge (attached). The collar of silver-gilt and enamel, of 28 links comprising one bearing the arms of Saxony, a rue crown on gold and black horizontal stripes in a floriate shield from which the badge is suspended; fourteen crowned lions; seven devices of addorsed E's (for Ernst) with a white Greek cross and crossed swords and six crowns with enamel caps of maintenance. Suspended from the arm is the badge (pre-1864) of gold and enamel; in the centre of a Maltese cross, the effigy of Duke Ernst the Pious surrounded by an oak wreath and the motto in gold on enamel FIDELITER ET CONSTANTER (Faithful and constant), which had been the motto of an Order founded by Duke Ernst's son, Friedrich I, in 1689, the 'Orden des Deutschen Redlichkeit'. Between the arms of the cross, four lions, In the original statutes two were black and two red, but in insignia of the mid-19th century and later the lions were varied only by hatching on their bodies in different golds, following standard heraldic patterns for red and black. Crossed swords dissect the Maltese cross and above the central device is a gothic letter E. The reverse has the arms of the House of Saxony with a Rue crown and the legend in gold on enamel D 25 DECEMBER 1833, the date of the Order's foundation.