1. Draw back crossbow string.
2. Put bolt in groove of crossbow.
3. Aim crossbow.
4. Shoot bolt at target.
5. Repeat!

I'm just fooling around, but is there such a thing as a repeating crossbow?

Get rid of the Saddam picture, it's distracting.

I have seen pictures of the chinese repeating crossbow.  It has a magazine on top of the bow string.  After each shot the shooter would pull back the entire magazine with the bow string.  The action would load the next arrow.  It is not very strong and has very limited range.  Most repeating corssbowmen would use poisonious darts to make their weapons lethal.

For info on chinese crossbows, see

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=3777

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=514

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=1475

What about accuracy??? How the H#@* do those darts fly in a strait line if they're unfletched??  

BTW, the display picture of the guy who reconstucted that that is... quite amusing 

Chinese repeating crossbow is not as accurate a single shot crossbow.Because the bolts are unfletched,they have weighted points or spiral cut along the bolt body.

Heh, yea, i made that sucker once. I didn't have that serious engineering attitude towards the crossbow as the guy in the links had, i just took whatever scrap wood was lying around, cut out rough details with figure saw. Had to correct the design as i went, but it turned out as a working crossbow.

And the lever mechanism gives a rough 3:1 advantage when cocking the bow, so you can use a 90lbs prod and be pulling back something like 30lbs. Still not much of a warbow, but better than just plain 30lbs. Mine has been used with bows from 29lbs- 60lbs.

Rate of fire is simply amazing- 1shot/second. A real machine gun. Accuracy is an issue, though, but sacrifices have to be made. And i used it in LARP (live action role playing game), where ranged weapons rarely get used at distances exceeding 25m- a devastating machine it proved to be.

Now just imagine some , say, 200 crossbowmen with these babies- 2000 missles in 10 seconds. Now that is some serious target saturation!