Mickiewicz welcomed the Crimean War of 1853–1856, which he hoped would lead to a new European order including a restored independent Poland. His last composition, a Latin ode "Ad Napolionem III Caesarem Augustum Ode in Bomersundum captum", honored Napoleon III and celebrated the British-French victory over Russia at the Battle of Bomarsund in the Åland Islands in August 1854. Polish émigrés associated with the Hôtel Lambert persuaded him to become active again in politics. Soon after the Crimean War broke out (October 1853), the French government entrusted him with a diplomatic mission. He left Paris on 11 September 1855, arriving in Constantinople, in the Ottoman Empire, on 22 September. There, working with Michał Czajkowski (Sadyk Pasha), he began organizing Polish forces to fight under Ottoman command against Russia. With his friend Armand Lévy he also set about organizing a Jewish legion. He returned ill from a trip to a military camp to his apartment on Yenişehir Street in the Pera (now Beyoğlu) district of Constantinople and died on 26 November 1855. Though Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński and others have speculated that political enemies might have poisoned Mickiewicz, there is no proof of this, and he probably contracted cholera, which claimed other lives there at the time.