In Reichardtswerben, the village nearest to the centre of the action, is a diorama of the battle in its final phase. Containing nearly 4,500 pewter figures, it was designed by a local schoolteacher in the 1930s, fell into disrepair after the war and was restored in the 1980s when the German Democratic Republic saw the propaganda advantage of acclaiming great figures from the past who had been active on its territory. 

In 1993, a few years after German reunification, the "friends" (Interessengemeinschaft) of the diorama were formed. They look after the little museum which contains the display and other rooms devoted to the battle. Used as a field hospital, it is a half-timbered building dating from 1632 with an open gallery on the first floor. Among its exhibits are Seydlitz's iron camp bed on which he lay after being wounded, the facsimile of a letter in French from Frederick to his sister Wilhelmine, the Margravine of Bayreuth, and a photograph of the then General (later Field Marshal and President) Paul von Hindenburg visiting the site in 1907. Also to be seen is a sculpted stone flame, the remnant of the first of several memorials to the battle. But more of these later.

Rossbach may have been a signal victory but events soon turned against Frederick again. On November 12 the Austrians took Schweidnitz, a strategically placed Silesian fortress which the king had greatly extended. Later that month Breslau (Polish Wrocław), the regional capital, fell to them. These two setbacks came on top of a string of others. Since the summer Frederick had been defeated at Kolin, expelled from Bohemia, seen his British-funded allies under the Duke of Cumberland beaten at Hastenbeck, and suffered the indignity of a raid on his capital, Berlin, by the Hungarian general, Andreas von Hadik. In the east he was under pressure from the Russians, in the north from Sweden.

It is against such odds that the great commander proves his mettle. "Once it has been determined, from the political conditions, what a war is meant to achieve and what it can achieve, it is easy to chart the course," Clausewitz writes. " But great strength of character, as well as great lucidity and firmness of mind, is required in order to follow through steadily, to carry out the plan, and not be thrown off course by thousands of diversions."