in Hungary are said to be almost complete. It is a matter of actual historical record - easily available to Verne in his research for the book - that on May 29, 1867, the Diet of Hungary ratified the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, under which the Hungarians gained a very considerable autonomy but shelved their demand for complete independence from Austria. Though the compromise is not explicitly mentioned in the book, it is clear that the aim of Sandorf and his fellow conspirators is to avert this ratification, seize control of Buda (Pest, Buda and Óbuda were unified in 1873) and other major Hungarian cities, and get the Diet to declare instead a complete Hungarian independence - gambling that Austria, enfeebled by its recent defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, would have no choice but to accept this fait accompli. (If successful, such a move would have substantially changed later European history, up to the outbreak of World War I). The conduct of the Austrian authorities, once the conspiracy is discovered, can also be seen against the same background: The Austrians move in complete secrecy to arrest, court-martial and swiftly execute the radical Hungarians, while cementing the deal with their more amenable compatriots in the glare of publicity. Verne's readers in 1885 could know, even before reading of the police arresting Sandorf and his friends, that the conspiracy would fail, that the moderate Hungarians' compromise with Austria would go ahead and that in fact Hungarians would prove fairly content with it. Verne claimed that Sandorf was modeled on his publisher. Like Hetzel, a former exile, Sandorf has fervent patriotism and a high moral sense. Dr Antekirtt is a mixture of Hetzel and Bixio, one of the publisher's friends. Others see similarities with Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth (who, like Sandorf, remained unreconciled to the compromise) and Austrian prince Ludwig Salvator. The action moves from Trieste down the Adriatic coast, to Sicily and the shores of North Africa. "I wish my readers to learn everything they should know about the Mediterranean," Verne wrote Hetzel," which is why the action transports them to twenty different places" (Simon Vierne, Jules Verne, Paris Ballard 1986). Several of the settings come from Verne's own travels, a rescue during a storm off Malta and visits to Catania and Etna. Verne researched the Italian landscape by rereading some of Stendhal's works notably Promenades in Rome and The Charterhouse