The children were first sent for spiritual admonition to the local Greek-Orthodox priests, whose efforts, however, proved fruitless in nearly every case.

They were then taken in hand by the sergeants and corporals who adopted military methods of persuasion.
These brutal soldiers invented all kinds of tortures.

A favorite procedure was to make the cantonists get down on their knees in the evening after all had gone to bed and to keep the sleepy children in that position for hours.

Those who agreed to be baptized were sent to bed, those who refused were kept up the whole night till they dropped from exhaustion.

The children who continued to hold their own were flogged and, under the guise of gymnastic exercises, subjected to all kinds of tortures.