Adam Mickiewicz (24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855) was a Polish national poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is counted one of Poland's "Three Bards" ("Trzej Wieszcze") and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe. He died, probably of cholera, at Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish and Jewish forces to fight Russia in the Crimean War.