The French vagrant starts to crush (7)
I believe the answer is:
trample
'crush' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'the french vagrant starts' is the wordplay.
'the french' becomes 'le'.
'vagrant' becomes 'tramp' (I've seen this before).
'starts' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'le' after 'tramp' is 'TRAMPLE'.
'to' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for trample that I've seen before include "Crush underfoot" , "One of the Simpsons" , "Encroach with violence" , "Tread roughly underfoot" , "Tread heavily" .)