Nam Định Province
In 1839, the governor of Vietnam's Nam Định Province summoned five hundred soldiers to a banquet to pressure them into trampling upon a cross in renunciation of Christianity. Most of the guests complied, but three Catholic soldiers refused. One of the Vietnamese Martyrs, Augustin Huy, is reported by some sources to have been sawed in two. Others report that he was hacked to death, or cut in two. But, a letter from 1839, just three weeks after the execution 12 June, states that he was beheaded: