Upon the outbreak of the 1848 Revolutions, he rushed to the Austrian Kingdom of Lombardy-

Venetia to join Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky defeating the Italian rebel forces of King Charles

Albert of Sardinia in Milan. For his role as a close advisor to Radetzky, as well as his status as
brother-in-law to Marshal Prince Alfred of Windisch-Grätz, who had suppressed
the Czech "Whitsun Riot" in Prague and the Vienna Uprising in October, Schwarzenberg was
appointed Austrian minister-president—the sixth within a year—and foreign minister on 21
November 1848. In these offices, which he both held until his premature death, his first step was
to secure the replacement of incapacitated Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria by his
nephew Francis Joseph. After heir presumptive Archduke Franz Karl had renounced the
succession, Ferdinand abdicated in Olomouc on December 2.
Schwarzenberg formed a new government with conservative politicians like Interior Minister
Count Franz von Stadion but also liberal allies like Baron Alexander von Bach, Karl Ludwig von
Bruck and Anton von Schmerling as well as the Bohemian federalist Education Minister
Count Leopold von Thun und Hohenstein. Learning from Metternich's fate, Schwarzenberg was
determined not only to fight, but overcome revolution. Against the perceptions in the Frankfurt
Parliament concerning the German question, he advocated the idea of an Austrian-German
federation, including all Austrian crown lands in and outside the German Confederation. He
delegitimized the Frankfurt assembly by recalling the Austrian delegates and preempted the
federalist ideas of the Austrian Kremsier Parliament with the promulgation of the March
Constitution in 1849.