His inwardly focused mind did not see the coming collapse of the Ming in 1644–1645. When anarchy and war broke over his beloved landscape in the Yangtze delta he was forced to flee to the mountains where he hid as a Buddhist monk. When he returned in 1649 all his property was gone and he lived as a tenant in the ruins of one of his beloved gardens. It was here he completed his history of the Ming Dynasty, in part to explain its collapse.