Consider a two-sword expert going up against a unit of drilled infantry. If they're spearmen, they've had a -lot- of practice at staying in line and co-operating with the men to either side and behind them. They're several ranks deep (four deep is a -thin- line) and hundreds of men wide.
To reach them at all, our swordsman has to get past the spearpoints of the front-rank men. From what my re-enactment friends tell me, a skilled swordsman can manage that all right, but then he's got to deal with the spears of the second and third ranks whil the front rank men concentrate on defence. He has to be a -lot- more skilled than the spearmen to have any chance of breaking through.
So he tries to work round to the flank. For a while, all he gets to are more spearmen in the same unit, then the next unit ... this may go on for a mile or more. Finally, he gets to the end of the line. If the enemy commander is at all experienced, he finds that the flank is covered in some way, usually by a terrain feature, or horsemen, or missile troops, posing him a whole new set of problems.
What if he's facing swordsmen? Now he has a different and harder problem - the swordsmen also have thrown weapons such as javelins or throwing axes. Now he's really missing having a shield ...
As for handedness - for several centuries the Roman Empire at its peak depended on the skill of its legionary infantry, equipped with sword, shield and javelins, serving for twenty-five years and drilling and training nearly every day of that time. We have their drill-books, we have works such as Vegetius' 'Strategems' entirely composed of dirty tricks a general can play on his enemy. In all this, there's no mention of training your men to fight left-handed. If you're going to argue that such training can be an effective tactic for large groups of men, you have to explain why it was that no Roman ever thought to try it!
Andrew
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