him that his desire for military glory could not be fulfilled, and he devoted himself instead to the study of modern Greek, Persian and Turkish. Resigning his commission in 1818, he was engaged as a teacher of Latin and Greek in the gymnasium at Augsburg, where his students included the young Napoleon III. In Augsburg his liberal, anti-clerical, tendencies, which had already begun to develop during his student years, expressed themselves in opposition to the growing ultramontanism of the Bavarian state. In 1821 Fallmerayer accepted another position at the Progymnasium in Landshut, where he continued to teach classical languages, in addition to religion, German, history, and geography. Landshut was at the time still a great university city, and Fallmerayer took advantage of its resources to continue his study of history and languages. In February 1823 Fallmerayer learned of a prize offered by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to encourage research into the history of the Empire of Trebizond. This late medieval kingdom, located on the south coast of the Black Sea, was at the time known only through scattered references in Byzantine and Turkish chronicles. Fallmerayer began to collect additional sources in a number of languages, including Arabic and Persian, from libraries across Europe, and corresponded with various scholars, including Silvestre de Sacy and Carl Benedict Hase. In December of the same year Fallmerayer submitted the resulting manuscript to the Danish Academy, and in 1824 he was awarded the prize. Fallmerayer's study, the Geschichte des Kaisertums von Trapezunt, was however not published until 1827. Fallmerayer attempted to convert his success into professional advancement in the Bavarian educational system. In the fall of 1824 he was named Professor at the Landshut Gymnasium, but in a series of letters to the kings of Bavaria, first to Maximilian I and then, following his death, to Ludwig I, Fallmerayer requested further funding for his research and a position as a professor at the University of Landshut. These requests were however denied, perhaps on account of Fallmerayer's liberal political views. In 1826 the University of Landshut was moved to Munich, the capital of the Bavarian state, while the Munich Lyceum was moved to Landshut. Fallmerayer was named Professor of History at the latter institution. In the academic year 1826–27, he offered a lecture course on universal history. His inaugural lecture was marked, once again, by his anti-clericalism and reformist-liberal political views. He