Sophie Françoise Trébuchet was born on June 19, 1772, in Nantes, rue des Carmélites, the fourth of eight children.

Her father, Jean-François Trébuchet, was captain of a ship, and her mother, Louise Le Normand (1748–1780), from Saint-Fiacre-sur-Maine, was the daughter of the seneschal Château-Thébaud.

[3] She became an orphan at the age of eight, when her mother died on August 14, 1780, three weeks after giving birth to her eighth child, who did not survive.

He took care before his departure to place his seven surviving children in boarding school, while the two eldest went respectively to his nephew Louis Trébuchet and his sister-in-law Louise Mathurine Le Normand du Buisson.

[4] She came to sympathize with the royalist cause after witnessing the execution of two young girls and their mother, Madame de La Biliais, whom she knew during her childhood.

Trébuchet traveled to Livorno to rejoin her husband and children, but learned that Léopold had a mistress named Catherine Thomas.

These cases were clarified, but La Horie was forced to sell his properties (including Saint-Just) and to go into exile in America, which he refused.

On December 29, 1810 Victor Fanneau de La Horie was betrayed and arrested at the Feuillantines, under the eyes of the Trébuchet-Hugo family.

He was not aware they were coming, and therefore, after a dangerous journey through a hostile country at war, the family was welcomed in Madrid by Léopold's brother.

Irritated by the actions of his wife, Léopold, living in Guadalajara with his mistress, sought divorce and the custody of his children, whom he placed at the College of Nobles in Madrid.

Trébuchet refused her husband's instructions and asked for help from Joseph Bonaparte, who was king of Spain; the spouses were quickly reconciled.

But after some time, Léopold learnt from an unknown source the connection between Victor Fanneau de La Horie and Trébuchet.

One day she received an amount of 4,750 francs from Paris (she suspected La Horie of having sent it) and decided to leave at once; she took advantage of the escort of Marshal Bellune to cross Spain without trouble.

She recovered the custody of her children in 1818, when the civil court of the Seine pronounced the separation of the bodies and property of the Hugo couple.