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Personally, I suspect that it's ultimately impractical. Even the sword itself was not that common a weapon in history.
The most widespread weapon, from what I can see, was actually the Spear, and occasionally it's longer variant the Pike. While in a one on one battle the spear is less effective then the sword, when you look instead at mass formations, the spear is much more effective. Add a shield to it, and you've got something special...
Not only that, but swords are much harder to manufacture to. Making a sword requires advanced metalworking technology, and historically, most Long-swords were simply too brittle to be in any way useful.
I would say a Sword/shield, a spear/shield, or a mace/shield combination is the most practical.
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