54-2: Chateaubriand (1768-1848): a great French writer. He chose to be a kind of official paladin of Catholicism.
54-3: del hacha: cf. note al ave, p. 25, 3.
55-1: echar por tierra: throw to the ground.
55-2: Don Quijote, Sancho Panza: the would-be knight errant and his squire, the chief figures of Cervantes' immortal story of Don Quixote, published in 1605. The passage is from part II, cap. XLII, sub fine.
55-3: Guerra de la Independencia: (1808-1814): the war waged against Napoleon, who invaded Spain in 1808.