bushments

Noun

bushment (plural bushments)

1. (obsolete) An ambush.
   • And by the way Sir Meliagrance laid in an embushment the best archers that he might get in his country, to the number of thirty, to await upon Sir Launcelot, charging them that if they saw such a manner of knight come by the way upon a white horse, that in any wise they slay his horse, but in no...1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum III”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book XIX, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer...
2. (obsolete) The troops concealed in an ambush.
3. (obsolete) A surprise party; a company of soldiers secretly deployed.
   • The first day of August a bushement of Frenchemen came to the cawsey but a myle and halfe out of Caleys, where they brenned howses, toke many men prisonars, droffe away horses […].c. 1541, The Chronicle of Calais, John Gough Nichols, Camden Society No. 35, London 1846