By 27 June, Suvorov moved his main army west to cover the sieges of Alessandria and Tortona while Kray was still reducing Mantua. Suvorov and his Austrian chief of staff Johann Gabriel Chasteler de Courcelles planned to evict the weakened and battered French forces from Genoa and the Italian Riviera. However, instructions soon arrived from Vienna squelching any notion of offensive operations. Emperor Francis and his foreign minister Johann Amadeus Francis de Paula, Baron of Thugut insisted that the Italian fortresses must first be captured. In fact the emperor and Thugut were suspicious of Russian designs on Genoa and Tuscany, areas which they considered to be in Austria's sphere of influence. For his part, Suvorov was annoyed with Viennese officials for trying to direct the war from long distance.