Start with initial fault finding:
What happens when you try to receive or send email? Do you see any errors - and if so, what do you see?
If email is failing to send or receive, you are likely to see indicative errors at the bottom of the mail sidebar - the wording of the error usually providing sufficient information to determine the nature of the problem.
Deleting and re-adding your email account is sometimes the easiest way to resolve a problem with a specific Mail account. After deleting the account, perform a forced restart before re-adding the email account to your iPad.
Settings > Mail > Accounts > [Your Mail Account] > Delete Account
Force restart iPad - Apple Support
Settings > Mail > Add Account
Assuming that you are not using a POP3 mailbox, all your mail is stored on your Mail Providers Mail servers - with only a copy of this data residing on your devices. As such, deletion of the mailbox from your iPad will not cause any loss of data.
NB: Be aware that some email providers now require the use of App Specific Passwords when accessing mail over IMAP or POP3. If this applies to your email account, you will need to generate a unique password for your iPad email account - that will differ from your normal Account Password. As examples - AOL, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft all use App Specific Passwords when using anything other than their own email client Apps.
If you need to generate an App Specific Password, you’ll need to log-in to your Mail Providers account management webpage - using a web browser - and generate the Password from the appropriate account security page.
More information about AOL’s App Specific Passwords can be found here:
https://help.aol.com/articles/allow-apps-that-use-less-secure-sign-in?guccounter=1
For Yahoo, more information can be found here:
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN27791.html
For Gmail:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/185833?hl=en-GB
Microsoft:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/using-app-passwords-with-apps-that-don-t-support-two-step-verification-5896ed9b-4263-e681-128a-a6f2979a7944