His ideas for reconfiguring the relationship between the army and the state failed to convince the wider political establishment. As he persisted, others from the military found practical objections to his proposals, while in general terms, an attack on the status quo came to be presented as an attack on the aging king. There were mutterings that he was spreading republican ideas. Tscherning, finding himself on the receiving end of a royal rebuke, offered to retire; but the king refused to accept his retirement, preferring to find a more subtle way to cool the debate. Tscherning was ordered to embark on a study trip which, as the king put it, would take a long time ("tage lang Tid"). For the next five years he visited a succession of countries in Europe, carefully studying their military administrative structures and sending home a succession of detailed reports which, he quickly became convinced, were ignored. He also sent letters about foreign military arrangements to publicly available journals, causing intense annoyance to the king and his chancelry.Harald Jørgensen, Trykkefrihedsspørgsmålet i Danmark 1799–1848, Ejnar Munksgaard 1948, pp. 120–121. In 1838 Tscherning was informed that his study trip was completed and he was permitted/summoned to return home. On arriving back home he issued another booklet, arguing that the solution to the problem of integrating the military into the state apparatus must be part of a wider solution involving the reorganisation of the overall government structure and indeed something approaching a revitalisation of the national soul. He again applied to resign from the army but his application was turned down. Instead he went to France where he spent a couple of years working as a military engineer, appointed a battery commander in 1841.
