Legend
Oracewicz's button
How a Kraków braid-maker shot a Russian colonel with a button.
In 1768, during the Bar Confederation, Kraków was besieged by Russian troops. The townsmen defended the walls. Marcin Oracewicz, a passementier, a maker of decorative braids and buttons, fired from the Barbican, and when he ran out of bullets he cut a button from his own coat, loaded his musket with it and hit Colonel Panin. The siege collapsed.
Whether it is true nobody knows, but Oracewicz was a real person, and a plaque on the Barbican facing the Planty has commemorated him since 1912. In Kraków they still say: if you have no bullets, shoot with buttons.