In his capacity as War Marshal, Li Ding settled on a strategy: surround Chang'an on three sides, then call for its surrender.
Before the whole army had even moved out to surround Chang'an, Zhang Xing unhesitatingly signed the document Dragonhead Li had drafted, formally issuing the first imperial edict of his reign. It declared that circumstances had changed, and all previous surrender proclamations and private surrender agreements were void.
The clock would restart when proclamations containing the edict were shot into the city. For those who came out and surrendered within three days, officials would be selected for appointment by the new dynasty; prefectural soldiers and conscripted men would be exempted from punishment, military officers retained, and rank-and-file soldiers given grain to return home. Over the next three days, all officials would be reduced to commoners, while officers, prefectural soldiers, and conscripted men would be sent straight home without further inquiry. Over the following three days, officials, soldiers, and conscripts alike who defended the city for the enemy would be subjected to decimation. Those who still refused to leave after that, if enrolled in the enemy's ranks, would not only face decimation but all be made captives, eligible for land grants and a return to commoner status only after five years of labor.
This was the so-called surrender policy.
The edict was issued on the sixteenth of the third month. Only on the eighteenth was the encirclement on three sides complete, but the proclamations had already been shot inside two days earlier. There had been surrenders before, but only sporadically. Once the encirclement was complete, people immediately began surrendering in droves. By that night, countless officials, military officers, prefectural soldiers, and conscripted men had fled the city.
The next day was somewhat calmer. By the twentieth, entire organized units began