History is deplorable with the French (9)
I believe the answer is:
chronicle
'history' is the definition.
(I know that history can be written as chronicle)
'deplorable with the french' is the wordplay.
'deplorable' becomes 'chronic' (I've seen this before).
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'chronic'+'le'='CHRONICLE'
'is' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for chronicle that I've seen before include "journal" , "History" , "Story" , "Historical account" , "(Make a) historical record" .)