Which revolutionary’s speech at the Palais-Royal incited the storming of the Bastille?

The revolutionary whose speech at the Palais-Royal helped incite the storming of the Bastille was Camille Desmoulins.

On 12 July 1789, Desmoulins addressed a crowd in the gardens of the Palais-Royal after news spread that King Louis XVI had dismissed the popular finance minister Jacques Necker. He urged Parisians to take up arms and reportedly suggested wearing green leaves as a sign of solidarity. The speech helped turn political alarm into open mobilisation.

The immediate crisis was larger than one speech. Troops had gathered around Paris, food prices were high, and many people feared that the king intended to suppress the newly formed National Assembly. Crowds seized weapons from the Hôtel des Invalides on 14 July and then moved to the Bastille, seeking gunpowder and ammunition. The fortress surrendered later that day.

Desmoulins was a journalist, pamphleteer and political activist who became prominent during the Revolution. Marat, Danton and Robespierre were also major revolutionary figures, but they were not the canonical answer to this specific Palais-Royal speech. Desmoulins’s intervention is remembered as one of the sparks that preceded the Bastille’s fall.