A hundred men come in prepared to start (8)
I believe the answer is:
commence
'start' is the definition.
(I know that start can be written as commence)
'a hundred men come in prepared' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'hundred' could be 'c' (Roman numeral) and 'c' is present in the answer.
'men' could be 'mm' (N is short for knight - man can mean a chess piece) and 'mm' is found within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'to' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for commence that I've seen before include "Kick off" , "open" , "Start up, set about" , "Start, begin" , "Originate" .)