Metternich began to suffer from poor health, as did his second wife, Antoinette, who gave birth to a son, Richard, in January 1829 and then died five days later. His first wife, Maria Eleonore, had died in 1825, after giving birth to seven children, four of whom survived into adulthood: Maria Leopoldina (1797), Klementine (1804), Leontine (1811), and Hermine (1815).

A third wife, Melania Maria Antonia Zichy-Ferraris, joined Metternich in 1831. Together, they had four children, three of whom lived into adulthood: Melanie (1832), Paul (1834), and Lothar (1837).

Metternich was preoccupied with stability in Italy and in the East in the 1830s. He also got a new emperor. Francis II died in 1835, and replacing him was his oldest son, who became Ferdinand I. Those two men were in charge when the Revolutions of 1848 occurred. Political unrest that had been building for a number of years translated into action, as frustrations within the empire from people who saw liberal reforms taking shape in other realms but not their, revolted.

A large number of university students organized a street demonstration in Vienna on March 13, 1848, calling for a representative government and universal suffrage. The response from the government was for troops to make the protesters disperse, using force if necessary. Soldiers did fire their guns, killing some of the student protesters; in response, a large group of workers joined the street protest, swelling the numbers considerably. The Austrian parliament, the Diet, demanded that Metternich resign; he did so, fleeing to the U.K. That left the emperor, who suffered from a severe form of epilepsy, without his key adviser. The regency had more than one member, however, and his uncle, Archduke Louis, helped him appoint a series of pseudo-chancellors. The Diet drafted a constitution in April, but the protesters would have none of it because they weren't also guaranteed the right to vote and again took to the streets in large numbers. The emperor continued to grant concessions, including making the Imperial Diet an elected Constituent Assembly. By August, however, high unemployment and a shortage of supplies were the twin culprits that continued to drive civil unrest.

At the same time, other cities within the Austrian Empire were the scenes for uprisings, among them the Italian metropolises of Milan and Venice and the Hungarian city of Pest. Ferdinand sent a large contingent of his troops to Hungary to quell the rebellion there; the result was a victory for the revolutionaries. The demonstrations in Vienna in October were very large indeed. Ferdinand fled Vienna and later abdicated, leaving the throne in the hands of nephew Franz Joseph.

Metternich stayed away for three years, returning not long before the major European powers descended into fighting again, in the Crimean War. He did not rejoin the government, watching from afar instead. His third wife, Melania, died in 1854. His own health worsened, and he ended the decline in death, on June 11, 1859, in Vienna. He was 86.

One of his last frustrations had been his inability to persuade Austria from engendering the Second Italian War of Independence, which led eventually to Italian independence and unification. It was one of several failures in his long diplomatic career, which was also filled with many successes.

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