I have just downloaded WIN 10 on my laptop and all of my previous Thunderbird emails, going back a very long time have disappered. I do not want to use a WIN account for everything. Not that kind of user.
Did you use IMAP or POP3 for your emails? If it was IMAP then they should be still on the server, but as they are gone I guess you used POP3 so they would have been stored locally on your PC.