Those that refused to eat pork or the customary cabbage soup prepared with lard were beaten and left to starve.

Others were fed on salted fish and then forbidden to drink, until the little ones, tormented by thirst, agreed to embrace Christianity.
The majority of these children, unable to endure the tortures inflicted on them, saved themselves by baptism.

But many cantonists, particularly those of a maturer age (between fifteen and eighteen), bore their martyrdom with heroic patience.

Beaten almost into senselessness, their bodies striped by lashes, tormented to the point of exhaustion by hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness, the lads declared again and again that they would not betray the faith of their fathers.

Most of these obstinate youths were carried from the barracks into the military hospitals to be released by a kind death.