Peace as interrupted by the French (7)
I believe the answer is:
silence
'peace' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'as interrupted by the french' is the wordplay.
'as' becomes 'since' (both can mean 'because').
'interrupted by' is an insertion indicator.
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'since' placed around 'le' is 'SILENCE'.
(Other definitions for silence that I've seen before include "Shut up!" , "Absence of sound" , "Quiet" , "Absence of racket" , "No talking" .)