'Brexit could be your Waterloo!' Le Monde warns Britain -- in English

(PARIS) - France's Le Monde newspaper used Thursday's 200th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat to issue a warning to Britain -- in English -- saying: "Beware, Brexit could be your Waterloo!"

The respected daily fired the shot in an editorial that also argued that France should learn the lessons and not ignore the "painful memory" of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French army losing to an allied force commanded by Britain's Duke of Wellington.

While sniffing "Who remembers Wellington? It is Napoleon who is celebrated today", Le Monde admitted that the image of its emperor was "tainted" and "the military genius, it turns out, was also a dictator".

But the thrust of the editorial was to urge Britain to not throw away the latter fruits of two centuries of Anglo-French peace by staging a British exit -- a "Brexit" -- from the European Union.

"The country that cornered Napoleon cannot succumb to (eurosceptic UK Independence Party leader) Nigel Farage.

"Today, we solemnly say to our friends across the Channel: beware, Brexit could be your Waterloo!"

Britain's conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to hold an in-or-out referendum on his country's EU membership by the end of 2017.

Le Monde said it wrote its editorial against a Brexit in English "to make sure the message is really heard" -- though it also provided a French version elsewhere in its pages so its usual readers would also be aware.

"Messieurs les Anglais, don't let the sirens of a fake independence pull you away from the continent. Just as in 1815, your future lies in Europe," it wrote.