Edict of Éridani

The edict of Eridani is a convention and a fictitious rule soldiers of the series Honor Harrington by David Weber.
In the Honorverse, the edict of Eridani is one of the conventions most important and respected at the time of the interstellar wars.

The edict of Eridani is baptized name of an incident known under the name of " Massacre epsilon of Eridani". During a military conflict, the planet epsilon of Eridani underwent a massive planetary bombardment by the enemy forces which had like consequence the death of more than seven billion its inhabitants. (it is a basic event which took place five hundred years before the events represented in the novels)

The edict is designed to proscribe and penalize the bombardment orbital as a blind man of a world populated of human or any form of bombardment against a planetary population which was not initially summoned to go, as well as the use of the weapons of massive destruction. According to the edict, the ballistic missiles are regarded as weapons of massive destruction, and an impact, even accidental and fortuitous, on a planetary surface by an anti-ship missile (which in the Honorverse usually move at the ballistic speeds after use of their fuel) is regarded as a violation of the edict.

The Ligue solarienne is the principal authority of application of the edict, taking the responsability to treat the violations of the edict of Eridani.
The usual penalty is an military intervention without restriction and an open war by the Marine of the League solarienne having for result the destruction of the nation or the offensive part. In fact, the application of the edict of Eridani is the only action which does not require a vote by the Parliament of the Ligue solarienne to be applied, and the edict is really written in the constitution of the League to ensure the immediate application of it.

As the Ligue solarienne is most powerful of the stellar nations in the Honorverse, with a so large military power compared to remainder of the nations that any hope to resist is not very reasonable, the belligerents pay attention usually extremely nothing to make which could have like consequence a violation, even involuntary, edict. The edict is also taken into account in naval engagements which take place near an inhabited world; the commanders of fleet are usually circumspect with launching missiles too much close to planet for fear one of them is not mislaid and face does not impact on the surface.

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