Politician arriving in before soldiers evacuated Victoria? (7)
I believe the answer is:
empress
'victoria?' is the definition.
(Queen Victoria is an example)
'politician arriving in before soldiers evacuated' is the wordplay.
'politician' becomes 'mp'.
'arriving in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'before' becomes 'ere' (usually literary**).
'evacuated' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'soldiers' with its middle taken out is 'ss'.
'mp' placed into 'ere' is 'empre'.
'empre'+'ss'='EMPRESS'
(Other definitions for empress that I've seen before include "1 across was from 1877" , "Powerful woman" , "Maria Theresa, perhaps" , "Queen Victoria was one" , "Victoria, the > female penguin?" .)