hawk, and the imperial eagle. As a result of its participation and assistance, the city retained its guild rights after the Schmalkaldic War of the 1540s and 1550s. In the Thirty Years War, the city was invested and besieged by Swedish soldiers and their Saxon allies in 1632 and 1634; despite lengthy and grueling siege, the city defenses held. Even when the walls were breached in May 1634, the population was able to resist in street to street, and house-to-house fighting, until the invaders withdrew. This seemingly miraculous occasion was attributed to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, and every year the citizens of Überlingen hold a so-called Sweden Procession. Another assault on the city in 1643 resulted in a French occupation until Franz von Mercy's Imperial-Bavarian army recaptured it in 1644. As a result of the Truce of Ulm ending hostilities between Bavaria and the allies Sweden and France, Swedish troops occupied the city in 1647–1649. Annexation by the Duchy of Baden: 1803–1918 With the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss in 1803, Überlingen lost its status as a Free Imperial city, and its legal, economic and political autonomy. As part of the German Mediatisation process, through which several of the German dynasties that lost lands and subjects on the west bank of the Rhine were compensated with other territories and populations, Überlingen became a part of the duchy of Baden, later the Grand Duchy of Baden. Through 13 Organizations Edicts, the Duchy of Baden administration reorganized formerly free territories into a new ducal organization. For Überlingen, this meant the restructuring of the entire apparatus of administration and governance. Organization edicts deconstructed Überlingen's consular system of mayors, in which two men were elected to the office for one year, the first serving until immediately after Christmas, and the second from then until the new election in the spring. The once free imperial city became the administrative seat for the district (Bezirksamt). Despite the relative importance of its position of administrative authority, the city entered a nearly century-long economic decline, exacerbated in the first decade of ducal authority by the Year without Summer, a consequence of the Tambora volcanic eruption in 1815, which had a VEI–7 index. In the revolutionary period, 1848–1849, Überlingen experienced its share of turmoil. Überlingen's own militia apparently enjoyed an early occupation of the wine cellars at the former Salem Abbey which, after 1803 became a ducal palace and winery; but