Energy and force about Frenchmen in online business (1-8)
I believe the answer is:
e-commerce
'online business' is the definition.
(trading conducted online)
'energy and force about frenchmen' is the wordplay.
'energy' becomes 'e' (physics symbol as in E=mco).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'force' becomes 'coerce' (synonyms).
'about' indicates putting letters inside.
'frenchmen' becomes 'mm' (two M's - M is short for Monsieur).
'coerce' placed around 'mm' is 'commerce'.
'e'+'commerce'='E-COMMERCE'
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for e-commerce that I've seen before include "Online trading" , "Internet trade" , "Transactions conducted on the internet" , "Business conducted via the internet" .)