As Talleyrand was to point out, a major capital was a bad place for a congress. And this one was getting larger by the minute. Vienna, whose population stood at some 250,000, accommodated 16,000 new arrivals in the course of September alone. Some estimates put the number of visitors during the congress as high as 100,000. This is probably too high, but if not only those who came to the congress, but their servants, their retinues and their troops, as well as the thousands of extra servants drafted in from the surrounding countryside are all taken into account, it may not be too far off the
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