Force a little devil to drive back the French (5)
I believe the answer is:
impel
'force' is the definition.
(I know that force is a action)
'a little devil to drive back the french' is the wordplay.
'a little devil' becomes 'imp' (an imp is a little demon).
'to' says to put letters next to each other.
'back' says to take the final letters.
'the french' becomes 'l' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The last letter of 'drive' is 'e'.
'imp'+'e'+'l'='IMPEL'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for impel that I've seen before include "Constrain" , "Cause to move forward" , "Urge forward, drive" , "Make" , "Press on - drive forward" .)