Updated

French daily Le Monde has used the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo to warn those across the English Channel against a British exit from the European Union.

In a rare English-language editorial on Thursday titled "Britain beware, 'Brexit' could be your Waterloo!" the paper writes that "the country which cornered Napoleon cannot succumb to Nigel Farage," the Euroskeptic and firebrand leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party.

Napoleon was defeated by English and Prussian troops on June 18, 1815 — which led to the demise of France's imperial hegemony — and saw Napoleon eventually exiled.

"Don't let the sirens of a fake independence pull you away from the continent," writes the paper, humorously. "Just as in 1815, your future is in Europe."