Waterloo, Belgium---One is an autocratic leader with grand European ambitions -- the other is Napoleon.
Nigel Farage shared a smile with an actor playing the French emperor at a Waterloo anniversary re-enactment as the British eurosceptic leader hailed the battle 200 years ago as an early victory over European federalist ambitions.
Farage visited the battlefield just south of Brussels, headquarters now of a European Union he wants to split up, as royalty and diplomats marked the bicentenary of a key turning point in the continent's bloody history.
"I am a military historian," Farage, an MEP and former City of London commodities trader, told AFP.
"I think that Waterloo has a huge significance. It is a victory of a group of independent nations against Napoleon who was trying to create a unified Europe," he added.
Farage, well known for his anti-EU tirades as a member of the European Parliament, also said he was delighted to have met Napoleon -- the French lawyer Frank Sansom who is impersonating the emperor through three days of commemorative events and battle re-enactments.
Napoleon, celebrated in some quarters as the progenitor of the idea of a peaceful united Europe, may have been misunderstood, according to Farage.
"He gave me a medal and I showed him a coin of five French francs of 1802," Farage said.
"He told me that it was better than the euro so I conclude that Napoleon was a eurosceptic!"
As for Samson, at 47 nearly the same age as Napoleon at the time of the battle, his day began with a smaller skirmish when local police pulled him up over where he had parked his car, the Derniere Heure daily reported.
Some 200,000 spectators are expected to make their way to Waterloo for the anniversary events, starting with Thursday's commemorative service and ending with battle re-enactments on Friday and Saturday, and the authorities have pulled out all the stops to make sure everything goes of smoothly.
AFP
